by Jean Kilczer
“They must have heard that their garrison is now a hole in the ground.” Reika wiped her eyes under the helmet. Her olive skin was lustrous and wet. She winked at me and smiled.
“So they think they're going to ambush us,” Chancey said. “The poor bastards.”
I glanced at Huff, waiting at the bottom of the dune with the horses, and waved. He waved back.
Reika and Wolfie opened their backpacks and took out small air drones. As they activated them, the display windows lit up and announced: ARMED.
“This is almost too easy,” Wolfie said and wiped his face.
“What about the guards behind the three dunes?” Bat asked. “The Denebrians are between us and them.”
“Can't be helped.” Wolfie put the armed 'bots into his backpack. “We take them out too.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Before you blow up the compound, we've got to get the Denebrians out of there!”
Wolfie lowered the display visor on his helmet. “Why don't we just tell the BEMs we're coming?”
“Wolfie,” I said, “Joe would've never agreed to this!”
“Reika,” Wolfie said, “you and Bat hit the shuttle and the compound's east wings.”
She nodded.
“We'll take out the main buildings,” Wolfie said, “and the guards at the dunes.”
“Reika!” I said as she slung her backpack over her shoulder. “You're OK with this plan?”
“He's right, Jules,” she told me. “We have to sacrifice the few to save the many.”
“There are kids down there,” I told her. “Chancey? Bat? We freed them once from the field. We can wait until night and do it again.”
“Man,” Chancey said, “I don't like this any more than you do. But if we wait until night, the BEM invasion force could have a squad or two over here to protect their HQ. And anyway, the trolls can see just as well at night, remember?”
“I can't be part of this,” I said. “There are families.”
“Jules, it'll be OK, babes,” Reika said. “We're going to wipe out their communication center.”
“And a lot of Denebrians with it!” I told her.
“I know how you feel.” Reika snapped down the display visor over her eyes. “But they're not humans.”
I stared at her, too shocked to answer.
She put her hand on my arm. “Just do your job, OK?”
I brushed off her hand and saw her lips tighten.
“Chancey,” Wolfie said. “Stay with me. After we soften them up, we go in for mop up.”Your job, superstar," he said sarcastically, “is to make tel contact with any BEM survivors and relay their location to us.” He slapped a comlink into my hand. “You hunker down right here. If I come back and you're gone, you'd better stay gone.”
“Bat?” I said.
“He's the captain on this one, Jules. In the military, the officer is law. I'm sorry.”
I sat behind the crest of the dune with the comlink held loosely in my hand and watched Reika and Bat move closer to the shuttle. Wolfie and Chancey ran low, toward the guards behind the three dunes. The Denebrian children's chatter as they played inside the fenced killing field rang in my ears. Perhaps it took the military mind, I considered and stared at the dappling sand, to deal with the death of the innocents as a necessary consequence of battle.
I closed my eyes but could not block out the synchronized explosions that thudded through my chest like the heartbeats of war.
The children's chatter changed to shrieks and mixed with the anguished wails of adults. Even the BEM's high keen as they died struck my mind like arrows. My eyes and throat burned from acrid smoke that drifted overhead. I wiped rain and tears from my face. I was too far, too far to comfort the children as their kwaiis bolted from their torn bodies.
“Great Mind.” I dug my hands into the heavy wet sand. “Why do you allow such agony?”
But only the roiling smoke and leaden clouds stirred over endless sands.
Huff looked up at me from the bottom of the dune. I shrugged and put the link in my jacket pocket. I was too far to probe for survivors, Denebrians or BEMs. I trudged to the crest of the dune.
The killing field was a blasted hollow in the sand. A few posts smoked and jutted at angles, but I saw no movement and felt no stirrings of minds within that collapsed pit. The BEM HQ was now a series of mounds. Sparks and sporadic flames spurted from the sand. The shuttle crouched like a great broken spider on its runway. The three dunes where BEM guards had laid their trap for us were flattened.
I waved to Huff and he started up the dune with the horses.
Perhaps I was still too far to mindlink with anyone left alive, Deneb or BEM. I trudged through soft sand that left no footprints; breathing acrid air that burned my throat. The team was somewhere ahead, lost in swirling smoke. There is a stillness that speaks of the eternal places, the geth states between lives. I felt it here among the great sweep of desert. I wiped my watering eyes, assailed by tears and rain and stinging smoke. I was soaked down to my socks. If I wanted camouflage, the wet, clinging sand provided it.
The BEMs' central structure was partially standing, still braced by a fibrin frame that creaked in the wind. I stepped over charred bits of burning debris as I entered. Flames crackled and sparked, with sporadic bursts of hot ashes. Black smoke hung beneath the torn ceiling, where rain beat down through blasted beams and soaked the blackened floor. The bitter odor of burned alien flesh assaulted my nostrils and I retched.
When my eyes adjusted, I saw the torn pieces of furred skin, the ripped tentacles, the exposed bones, in hardened pools of yellow fluid. I wanted to turn and run, but there might still be living beings deeper within these devastated halls.
I glanced back. Huff stood on the crest of the dune, his thick hind legs as he held the horses' reins, as solid as the bedrock of terra itself. I turned and continued into the skeleton of the BEM headquarters, past com equipment with sparking wires that cackled electronic nonsense, and split beams that creaked in the wind.
I closed my eyes and probed again for the living, but the mental landscapes were as barren of life as these shattered halls.
Wait! What was that? A fragile link. A mind as much concerned with the places between lifebinds as with the reality of this desolation. I followed it, like a distant light in a tunnel, stepping over debris and cracked timbers.
Where are you? I sent. Are you BEM? I won't hurt you.
I felt the humor in his anguished thoughts No more than you already have?
I pushed aside a door that hung on a hinge and entered a dark room where sand from the broken roof spilled down into small mounds, like time itself running out.
I jumped and drew in a breath when I saw him. My hand went reflexively to my holstered stingler.
He sat on a dais and leaned to one side, as though he could not hold himself upright. His mantle was sliced open just below his left eye, and dripping fluid. An old white scar ran like a lightning stroke under the belt he wore, with a knife in a sheath. Rainwater puddled around his limp tentacles. He held a beam weapon loosely in one of them, pointed downward.
“Older brother,” I whispered.
“You remember me.” His words were slurred.
“We have a medic on our team. I think he can still help you.”
He stared at me with large, luminous yellow eyes. “There is a Terran painting I've always admired. The dead are called to judgment and sent to bliss or punishment. We have it on a stolen Earth holo in our museum.”
“Judgment day,” I said. “I'll get our medic.” I moved toward the door, my hand still on my stingler.
“Do you believe that's what awaits us?”
“No.” I paused. “I know it doesn't.”
“I've done things in my life that I regret, Terran.”
“Who hasn't?”
He coughed and yellow liquid trickled from his bulbous mouth. “We are a doomed people. This invasion and the food supply of Denebs was our last hope.”
I
didn't tell the dying BEM that Alpha had already presented Tau Ceti with the ultimatum of turning back its fleet or facing a military engagement with the mighty Worlds Alliance force.
“It's not too late,” I said. “Not if your military turns the invasion force back and petitions for peace. If Tau Ceti offers to make recompense for the wrongs they've done the Denebrian people, your race could still be welcomed into the worlds community. None of the Alliance members has a clean historical slate.”
“How do you propose I accomplish that?”
“I don't know.”
“Nor I. We are what God and nature made us to be. My brothers and All Mothers on my homeworld are starving. They die in the corridors of our hives.”
"It doesn't have to happen! You can clone animals for parts, the way we do. We don't even harm the donor animals.
“Our world is rocky and poor in grasslands. There are too many of us.” He moved the stingler toward me and I tightened my grip on my weapon, but it was only a gesture. “If our invasion fleet is turned back by Alpha's mightier force, we will suffer mass starvation.” He shifted position and I realized that the way his eyelids wrinkled indicated deep pain.
“Your race gives up pretty easily, doesn't it, brother? Why not trade with the interstellar community for the ingredients you need to grow mock meat parts.”
“We have nothing to trade but armaments.” He took a quivering breath through bulbous lips. “Your government has laws in place to prevent the sale of weapons.”
“Dammit! If you won't help yourselves, then your race is doomed. You can't attack planets and tear apart their sapient beings for your goddamn supper!”
“Preach me no sermons, human.” His voice was a whisper. “I've seen the history holos from Earth. Your race glorifies the killing of your own kind by the millions.”
“That was a long time ago. At least we don't eat our dead.”
“Neither do we. No member of the Zwigzayllzyts race, or BEMs, as you like to call us, would conceive of cannibalism under the worst of conditions. We love our brothers and our All Mothers, while you humans desecrate the act of creation and your life givers with swear words.”
“We do? Oh. Mother fuckers. Yeah. Well… Well, dammit, we didn't start this war. You did with your unchecked reproduction and stripping your homeworld of its resources.”
His head slowly tilted to one side. The wound still bled. “Yes. We love our children too much. That is our downfall.” He began to raise his beam weapon toward me, but very slowly. I knew what he wanted. He left me no choice but to comply.
I unholstered my stingler, gritted my teeth, and fired point blank between his large disc eyes. He jerked back. His mouth twisted open in a high keen. I watched his eyes turn dull as he pitched forward and toppled to the floor.
“I'm sorry, brother,” I whispered. I took his stingler and realized that the on button was dark! The weapon was not charged. It could never have fired. “Go with Great Mind, brother,” I said. I took his knife, put it inside my jacket pocket, and sealed it there. I was about to mindlink with him to ease the path of his kwaii out of this life and into the geth state, but a furious probe invaded my mind.
Who…who are you? I sent, and looked around the empty room. Are you BEM?
Come to me, destroyer.
I felt a compulsive desire to walk down a dark side passageway. You're Bountiful! I sent. Only Bountiful was such a powerful telepath. I realized I was moving toward the passage and stopped myself.
I am the Giver of Life, small creature of a day. And I am hungry. You have destroyed my food supply. Now come to me, morsel.
Give it up, Bountiful. Maybe Alpha will let you live!
The mental pull I felt was obsession. My heart beat heavily in my chest. I had to move toward that dark passage as I had to breathe. I had to enter it.
“No!” I said and began to spin a red coil.
She shattered it.
I spun it again, this time with more energy.
She shattered it again, as though a fist had smashed it into brittle pieces. I found myself walking through the dark passage. Even Sye Kor, that powerful Loranth telepath, could not command my thoughts with such ferocity until I drank the chemical from his pond. An invisible tidal force dragged me forward.
I lifted my shields and took refuge beneath the flower that was my essence. She blasted the shields as though they were paper and swooped down on the root of the flower, probing, seeking the place where I hid. One by one she ripped away the petals. I felt a tearing sensation, as though my brain were bleeding. I heard myself groan.
Soon I will drink your real blood, Terran.
Star Speaker! I sent, calling on my Kubraen spiritual teacher who was in geth state. Nothing. Spirit? The creator of planet Halcyon. Still nothing. Sye Morth? No, he was already in a new lifebind.
Where are your friends? Bountiful sent.
“OK, BEM.” If I had no choice but to meet her in some hidden chamber, she'd know the feel of a burn through her head. It was no less than the agony she'd inflicted on Denebrian children. My hand shook as I unholstered my stingler and gripped it till the handle dug into my palm. Only this weapon stood between me and my worst nightmare. I will not be taken alive, monster! I sent. I can't fight your tel power. But if you force us to meet, you'll be ensuring your own death.
Her laugh felt like a knife slash to my mind. I tried to hide my essence deeper beneath the flower's roots and the shattered defenses of my shield. She followed like a cat squeezing into a squirrel's den.
Perhaps, chambered as she'd always been, she didn't know the power of a beam weapon. She would learn now.
Dank air. A terrible odor of rotting flesh. The remains of her meals. Green light glowed from the walls of a chamber. Fungus, I think. The floor was white and soft as fur, ready to embrace the young as she dropped them. Infant BEMs squirmed within the hairs, like fleas in fur. The walls were stacked with lit cubicles for the young, like small, yawning coffins, but there were no helpers here to place the babies inside and insert the feeding tubes. Without help, the infants were doomed.
“Where are you, bitch?” I scanned the eerie chamber, so alien in its knobby walls, lit by glowing plant life. “You want a mouthful?” I checked the stingler for hot setting again. The light glowed a comforting green. “That's what you'll get!”
The BEM babies, all eyes and tentacles, dragged themselves through the furry carpet, and left yellow streaks in their paths. They must be hungry by now, I thought.
And doomed, Bountiful sent. I will not make your death easy, destroyer. You will know the agony of skin flayed from your body. The tear of bones ripped from your joints.
My hand trembled on the stingler. Its reassuring light glowed green. “Show yourself, monster. Are you hiding from this small creature of a day? Just another stock animal, that's all. Like the Denebrian kids you slaughtered!”
Not even that much, morsel. You are a dish called revenge.
"I'll make a deal with you, BEM. Surrender to the Alliance Forces and return to Tau Ceti with your fleet when it withdraws. You're in a no-win situation here.
I will not be taken alive.
That sounded familiar. “Then you'll be taken dead.”
Nature has made us enemies, Terran. Predator and prey.
“Right! And the fault's not in you, but in your stars that you're a friggin' monstrosity!”
Come to me.
“Sure.” I moved forward, leading with the extended stingler. “Where are you hiding out?”
In plain sight.
A ropy vine uncurled in my path from the ceiling. No! A tentacle. I raised the stingler to fire. Bountiful lay crouched behind a glass ceiling like a brown whale suspended ten feet above me. In my shock, I hesitated. She swung the tentacle like a whip and knocked the stingler from my hand. It bounced onto the carpet, its light flashing red.
“No!” I made a dive for it. The red light grew steady. “No!”
She made no attempt to stop me as I grabbed the
weapon, swung and pointed it at her. The red light faded and went out. The ring, I realized, was broken and dangling. I heard the ceiling crack as I got to my feet and headed for the entrance. This was no contest! This was nightmare.
Above my head the ceiling shattered into a thousand shards of glass that glowed green. Thirty feet of BEM monstrosity slid down to the carpet and blocked the entrance.
“Christ and Buddha!” I backed away as she extended tentacles, and fumbled for the knife in my jacket pocket. “It's not too late!” I pulled out the knife. “We can still deal.”
Her elongated membranous egg sac, perhaps half the length of her body, was taut with eggs that had eyes. Further down were embryos, pink and curled, then fetuses, then the brown-furred bodies of fully formed babies.
She opened a mouth crammed with predatory teeth and moved toward me like a seal undulating on land. I backed to a wall and flattened myself against it. My knees wanted to give out, but I stiffened them and remained standing. My heart wanted to leave for safer regions. My hand shook on the knife as I swung it threateningly.
I had an idea.
I picked up a BEM baby and held him before me. “Back off or I'll kill him. I swear I will. I'll mash him under my boot. Now back off!” His tiny tentacles curled wetly around my arms, seeking security, and I knew I wouldn't do it.
You've already killed him. And all his brothers.
I pressed my back against the slimy wall as she advanced. “Let me leave,” I gasped, “and I'll negotiate a peace.”
A tentacle whipped out faster than I thought it could and flung the baby across the floor. Along with my knife. There is your answer.
I breathed deeply, trying to get enough air. I slid to my knees, not able to run, frozen, as she wrapped a tentacle around my arms and pinned them to my chest. Great Mind! Help me. I struggled. She tightened her grip and lifted me off the ground. Great Mind. Get me out of my body! But He was away on other business. I wished I could pass out or die as I dangled and looked into that protruding maw of sharp glistening teeth, dripping saliva as she prepared to eat, down to a red throat. Her eyes were round and cold as chipped sulphur rings. Her nose slits opened and closed, spraying a pale liquid. She flicked out her tongue and ran it across my chest, under the sweater. You taste good, human.
