Imperative - eARC

by Steve White

  “The Home Hive One and Bug 05 warp points here in Pesthouse are only fourteen light-minutes apart. So no matter what happens at the former, it will be relatively easy to get out of this system via the latter. The problem arises in Bug 05. The warp point locations there are very much against us.” He pointed to the left-hand display.

  Bug 05, like Pesthouse, had a hot young blue giant star as its primary. Even more coincidentally, the astronomers asserted that they were not really all that far apart in the normal space of Newton and Einstein. Clearly, they lay in a region of new star-formation. But Trevayne’s attention was riveted on Bug 05’s warp points. At a bearing of six o’clock and a distance of twenty-seven light-minutes from the primary was the icon of the Pesthouse warp point. Directly opposite, at a bearing of twelve o’clock and a distance of sixteen light-minutes, was the warp point leading to Bug 17, their only possible fallback position. Finally, at a bearing of ten o’clock and a distance of thirty light-minutes, was the Bug 03 warp point, on the other side of which the Kaituni now lay.

  “If the Kaituni attack Bug 05, and look like taking it, before the Bugs attack Pesthouse, we would of course have to evacuate Pesthouse,” Trevayne resumed. “But it’s forty-three light-minutes from the Pesthouse warp point to the Bug 17 warp point—more, actually, because we’d have to give that damned blue giant primary a wide berth. And a Kaituni breakout would put them in a position to cut off that retreat.”

  “Precisely why I recommend evacuating Pesthouse now, while we can, Admiral,” said M’Zangwe.

  “However,” Trevayne continued, “I don’t think the Kaituni are going to attack first. I think they’re going to continue to let the Bugs go in front and take the casualties, and not try to enter Bug 05 until they can do so behind them.”

  “But sir,” said M’Zangwe in respectful tones, “assuming that the Bugs do attack Pesthouse first, and drive us out of it—a possibility we can’t ignore, given the resources we’ve now had to divert from there to Bug 05—what if the Kaituni attack from Bug 03 while the withdrawal is in progress? If they catch Commodore Allende’s command—”

  Trevayne turned to face them. “It is for that reason that I’m going to order Commodore Allende to take the devastators and superdevastators out of Pesthouse forthwith and station them in Bug 05 just short of the Bug 17 warp point. That way, if the Kaituni do break in, they’ll be able to get away ahead of them. And if, as I believe, the Bugs attack Pesthouse and subsequently attack Bug 05, they’ll be in a position to cover our retreat to Bug 17 before exiting.”

  Magda looked very thoughtful, even though Trevayne was agreeing with her about staying in Pesthouse, at least for the time being. “You realize, Ian, that without the firepower of the devastarors and superdevastators, holding Pesthouse against the Bugs becomes very problematical.”

  “Let’s call a spade a bloody shovel! The defense of Pesthouse will become a delaying action. But I believe delay is worth it. It gives the Heart Worlds and what’s left of the Corporate Worlds more time to rebuild our forces. Nevertheless, I will evacuate Pesthouse without hesitation, writing off the fortresses, the instant it appears that the system can no longer hold. We have to conserve our forces for the defense of the main warpline to Sol.”

  There was no further discussion. No one present envied Trevayne for being the one who had to make such decisions, and such terrifying choices.

  *

  Zum’ref sent (satisfaction) and settled into a relaxed pose after hearing the last of the reports from Bug 03.

  “Very well. The operation was somewhat more difficult and protracted than we anticipated, but the point is that we are now in a position to threaten Bug 05 directly. So we can proceed to make a series of probing attacks.”

  (Perplexity.) “But Destoshaz’at, it was my understanding that—”

  (Irritation.) “Of course, Inzrep’fel, of course. These attacks won’t be pressed home to the extent of taking the system, even if our forces in Bug 03 could do so at this juncture, of which I’m far from certain. No; these attacks will be for the purpose of forcing the human admiral to siphon off more and more of his forces from Pesthouse, thus enabling the Arachnids to take it and press on to Bug 05 from their direction. Only when they have entered Bug 05 will our fleets enter the system—from both directions, forming up behind them. I’m sure this will come as no surprise to this human admiral.”

  (Smugness.) “By this time, he probably thinks we have no surprises left.”

  “Very likely. Little does he know what we have left—a very major surprise.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The moment Alessandro Magee stepped down onto the turf of the Star Union world of Tevreelan Three, Harry Li’s voice was loud in his helmet earbud. “Tank, have you deployed into the target zone?”

  ’Sandro, weapon still at the ready from habit rather than immediate necessity, surveyed his surroundings. “Yep, Harry. We sure have.”

  “Well, Boss—how about a report?”

  Harry sounded impatient and more than a little annoyed. He’d been the one to point out that the two of them, as the most experienced ground-pounders in Commodore Wethermere’s recon detachment, should not both be risked in the snoop and poop missions to each of the worlds the Bugs had hit. But whereas Harry’s surreptitious intent had been to keep his large friend out of the field, ’Sandro had ordered a fifty-fifty split of the landing missions. The two of them now alternated between dirtside landing team leader and spaceside operations controller, planet by planet. Li had still not forgiven him for subverting his initial intent.

  “My report,” ’Sandro said finally, “is that Tevreelan Three is damned weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “You’ll see. I’m adding video feed to the laser-com now.”

  Tank toggled through the HUD’s secondary selection matrix with his chin, selected the video icon, and held up his left fist, signaling his squad to stop. He did not motion them down, although in other environments, that would have been the doctrine. Instead, he moved his head slowly from side to side. “You getting the feed, Harry?”

  “Yes, I—I guess I am. What the hell are those?”

  ’Sandro looked down at his feet, where a radially symmetric, six-legged arthropod lay in what seemed to be torpor. Its pencil-sized legs were mostly folded underneath a body that resembled a flattened ostrich egg. The only sign that it was alive was a faint dilate-constrict cycling of respiration ducts, one of which was snugged into every gap between leg joints, all around the periphery of its body. The faint bull’s-eye marking, imparted by concentric back plates, seemed to bulge a bit, as if the creature was swollen or gorged. “They’re Arachnid creepers.”

  He heard Li hiss out a surprised breath. “That doesn’t look much like the ones we’ve seen on the other worlds. Are there any others nearby?”

  By way of answer, Tank tilted his head back up to give Harry the same horizon-line view that had confronted ’Sandro and his team when they first exited the Viggen’s armored gig. They had been, as per their unofficial motto, ready for anything.

  But not for this. Scattered across an overgrown lawn like a plague of immensely large mushrooms, the crop of torporous creepers stretched right up to the PSU consular compound’s walls, into the fields behind it, and the woods that rolled up toward hills beyond them. ’Sandro turned slowly to his rear. Behind the Viggen, the town identified on their maps as Lelraen lay motionless beneath aqua skies and yellow star called Tevreelan. The streets were filled with the motionless humps of still more creepers.

  “Damn,” breathed Harry. “Where they hell did they all come from?”

  “The Bugs. Where else?” The creepers had been a common sight on all the worlds they had visited as they moved in the wake of the Arachnid fleet: Franos, Telik, Reymiimagar. But on those planets, the creepers had been lean, agile, speedy, and much flatter, skittering toward intruders with utter abandon—and utter disregard to their own losses. A veritable horde of them had streamed toward ’Sand
ro’s landing team on Telik, emerging from the savaged buildings of one of the few cities that had not been wholly incinerated by the Bugs. Like a rolling carpet of hyperactive severed hands, they had not posed a credible threat to the battle-armored humans who blasted them with incendiary grenades and flechette rounds. But the mere thought of being buried under that writhing mass of senseless attackers had made the team edgy, particularly as, despite staggering losses, the creepers closed through the last few meters—

  —and then abruptly stopped and ran the other way until the bipedal intruders stopped firing at them. Some returned to their prior shelters, others, still restless, seemed to circle about, seeking more satisfactory prey until they, too, ceased to be agitated and sought new cover.

  A few specimens had been stunned and transferred to the dilapidated civilian packet that Yoshikuni had designated an all-purpose quarantine and observation ship. There, fleet medtechs—wishing they had one true xeno-biological specialist among them—had observed and ultimately dissected the sample creepers. Their common origins with the Bugs were immediately evident: they shared approximately ninety percent of the same, simple and almost totally nonmutative genetic material. The creepers’ peculiar shift from extreme aggressiveness to avoidance was explained fairly quickly, also. Initially attracted by the motion of the landing team, the arthropods’ terminal approach had failed to furnish them with the final stimulus to press home an attack: prey scent. The sealed suits made the encased humans no more interesting to the creepers than a patrol of robots would have been.

  But the unanswered mystery posed by the presence of the creepers was why the Bugs were bothering to seed infestations of them on worlds they had already shattered. Certainly there were likely to be survivors of the withering blanket bombardments, which had been a mix of nuclear weapons and simple kinetic penetrators and impactors launched by rail guns. But there was no credible hope of those survivors rebuilding the savaged planets back to the point where they might offer resistance again—not for many years, at least.

  “Okay, Tank,” Harry sighed. “Enough time staring at the creep-show. Time to advance.”

  Alessandro Magee’s one great failing as an officer asserted itself as, given the eerie and onerous environment into which they had to advance, he took point himself and announced, “Hound One, on me. Harry, we are moving to waypoint one. Shall observe and report.”

  Harry didn’t even bother to argue with ’Sandro; he just released a long, exasperated sigh. “You know, you’re setting a terrible example for every man in the team who might become an NCO or officer, one day.”

  “Yeah, well, on this day, I’ll take that chance. I don’t like the vibe down here. Too many ways we could be surprised.”

  “All the more reason for you to have your senior NCO on point. And for you to always run ops, up here.”

  “Drop it, Harry. You can pester me off the clock, but not when I need to stay sharp.”

  “Acknowledged. Look-down sensors show no movement in your area. No bio-grade thermals in the open. Can’t tell about the heavier buildings of the consular compound.”

  “Roger that. Am now at the outer wall of the compound. Is my video feed still good?”

  “All transmissions are five-by-five. Give me a corner peek and a pan-around, Tank.”

  “Will do.”

  The compound gate—ornamental rather than a serious defensive barrier—was ajar. There was no evident damage to the structures, or even the electronic surveillance equipment, but again, there was the same ghost-town appearance, and the ubiquitous, inert creepers. The grass was long, the gardens gone to seed, the main doors wide open, as were several windows. No lights were showing anywhere, not even on the security and communication control panels at checkpoints or liaison stations—

  —a silhouette lurched past an upper story window, was gone as quickly as it had flitted into view.

  Li had evidently seen it too. “Tank, recommend you deploy a microbot to—”

  But Tank had already signaled the closest fire team to stick on him and was charging the front entrance of the consulate. “No, Harry. That takes too long, and we don’t know if some of these damn creepers might activate.” He charged into the consulate’s lobby, scanning, saw the stairs, started up. “I need to get a battle-suited human wall up around whoever, or whatever, we saw. And I want a medical skiff down here as soon as you can—”

  ’Sandro reached the top of the stairs, saw motion, swung his gun in that direction, keeping the barrel high since he had not yet identified the source as friend or foe—

  And for a moment, was not entirely sure which he was looking at. A human—a woman, perhaps in her thirties—was staggering toward Magee’s fire team. It was unclear if she was aware of them. But it was quite clear that she was emaciated, distracted—and adorned with creepers.

  Behind ’Sandro, Corporal Anasi Uhatu brought her coil gun around to bear on the woman. Magee intercepted it with his hand. “Belay that, Corporal.”

  “But sir,” Uhatu objected tensely, “she’s—infected. Or something.”

  “Yes, and we won’t find out what that ‘something’ is if you blow her apart. And don’t be so quick to kill one of us, Uhatu.”

  “Uh…okay, sir. But are we really sure she is still one of us?”

  Good question, but—“Until we know differently, that’s what we assume. Now, let’s get her back to the LZ. Commander Knight should be sending the med skiff down from the Woolly Impostor any minute, now.” He grazed a power-suited paw at the thigh of the woman, who had come to stand before them in a dull-eyed daze: one of the creepers fell off at his touch, tried to wallow off into the shadows. “Uhatu: that creeper—”

  “You want me to burn it down, Captain?”

  “No, I want you to capture it, Uhatu.”

  “Yes, sir. But to tell the truth, I just wanna understand how to kill them.”

  ’Sandro took the dazed woman’s shoulder in a gentle grip, began to steer her toward the stairs. “Understanding how they live will also tell us how best to exterminate them wholesale, Corporal. And possibly, much more.”

  *

  In the admiral’s conference room aboard TRNS Krishmahnta, Ossian Wethermere nodded approvingly at the conciseness of ’Sandro Magee’s presentation. “Thanks, Alessandro. Any other pertinent facts—or observations or hunches—that don’t fit into an after-action report?”

  “Well, sir, I’ve got an observation, but I’m sure it’s something you’ve already noticed. Along with half of the ratings in the fleet.”

  Admiral Yoshikuni leaned forward. “Commodore Wethermere tells me you’re a very direct man, Captain. Start proving it. What is this observation?”

  “Yes, Admiral. Well, it’s simply this: the Bugs aren’t behaving at all the way history paints them. According to what I learned in school, they had only two discernible traits, both strategically and biologically: they were perpetually ravenous and they were absolutely xenocidal. Every other intelligence species was both a threat and a food-source, which elicited the same response: when it came to other races, ‘defeat ’em, eat ’em, and move on.’

  “But this time? Sirs: we’ve followed behind them into four systems now—five, if you count C-4, which had no population to speak of—and so far, they haven’t even bothered to land. All they do is bomb the hell out of everything that looks half-important, seed these creepers, and move on. And if fleet scuttlebutt is right, they didn’t even pause long enough to take a small detour to hit the Telikans’ most populous world, Myschtelik.”

  “I don’t see how fleet scuttlebutt would provide you with that information, Captain,” observed Kiiraathra’ostakjo.

  “Well, sir, common sense helped. After all, we didn’t go to Myschtelik ourselves to find out how the Telikans were doing, did we? And we could hardly afford not to confirm that, since if the Bugs had gone into the dead-end Myschtelik system, we would risking going past them and having them appear on our tail. So I tend to suspect that the rumors about
Commodore Wethermere’s arm’s-length meeting with a Telikan ship patrolling the warp-point into Myschtelik are accurate.”

  “And just how did you come by those rumors, Captain?” Modelo-Vo asked sharply.

  “Commander, it would have been hard to avoid them. They were flying thicker than jack flies around a camp lamp. Not that the contact with the Telikans could have been hushed up, anyhow. Shortly after arriving in the Reymiimagar system, and just as we starting drawing abreast of the warp point into Myschtelik, the fleet stopped and then dressed its formation for battle. That was the first and only time since we started shadowing the Bugs that the fleet adopted a formation other than the extended van pattern that is best for maximum traveling and warp transit speed. And as for what had caused that change of formation—Well, some of us work regularly with the commodore’s recon element and spacers drop hints, even when they don’t exactly mean to. If you get my drift, sirs.”

  “No, I don’t,” Modelo-Vo snapped at the same instant that Wethermere drawled, “Oh, I certainly do get your drift.” Before Modelo-Vo could recover, Ossian followed with, “So, ’Sandro, did those rumors tell you anything more specific about this ostensible meeting between my recon element and the Telikan ship?”

  “Not much, sir,” Magee admitted with a shrug, “except that they didn’t want to let our fleet enter their system and they weren’t willing to send any of their units along to help us. Which has a lot of us wondering, sirs.”

  “Define ‘a lot of us,’ Captain,” ordered Yoshikuni.

  “Well, ma’am, pretty much the whole fleet. At least all the parts that I have any contact with.”

  “I see. Anything else?”

  ’Sandro looked cautiously at the flag officers in the room. “Permission to speak freely, Admiral?”

  “Granted. On this occasion, encouraged.”