Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier.

by Doug Dandridge

  “Coming up on a drop,” said Zaya, her own attention on the scan of the bottom, the only real hazard to the sub out in the open sea. The ship was also scanning ahead and to all sides, as any maritime vessel would. “Looks like a drop off of twenty kilometers. Absolute depth, fifty-three kilometers.”

  “It goes a lot deeper than that,” said the Master Sergeant, pointing to the larger map that was projected onto one of the side bulkheads. “I doubt that this is the final redoubt.”

  “Assuming that it actually lives in the deepest depths,” said Zaya, looking back over her shoulder. “We have no way of knowing how deep this thing can go.”

  “Since it’s made up of liquids and solids, as far as we can tell,” said Kama, “pressure should not be a concern until it reaches the point where water starts turning into a solid.”

  “And what point is that, Master Sergeant?” asked the Major.

  “Probably nearing the deepest area of this ocean,” said Kama, shrugging his shoulders. “I think there are some other variables involved than just pressure, but that’s probably getting close to it.”

  “I want to find its lair,” growled Jensen, pointing at the plot. “I want this thing dead.”

  “What if it’s intelligent, ma’am?” asked Zaya.

  Jensen froze in her seat. There was no indication that this thing was intelligent. And she had no desire to find that evidence. She was a Constable Officer, and it was her duty to protect the citizens of the Empire. But by the laws of the Empire, intelligent life was considered sacred. Which didn’t mean that an individual from an intelligent species couldn’t be removed for the good of society. But genocide of intelligent species was forbidden, and if this creature turned out to be of intelligent, they could not destroy the species, no matter its threat to the citizens of the Empire.

  “We have no data consistent with intelligence,” said Kama, shaking his head. “Every reaction we observed was that of a predatory animal going after prey, then fleeing when it was rebuffed and injured.”

  “Unless we have evidence otherwise, we will treat this thing as an animal,” said Jensen, locking the Warrant Officer in place with her eyes. “We will do everything in our power to destroy it, and to make this planet safe. Understood.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Zaya, turning back to look at the forward viewer that was showing what was ahead.

  “It’s definitely going down,” said Kama, turning his attention back to tracking their target. “Change in elevation, one kilometer a minute.”

  “Are we ready to fire?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied the Master Sergeant. “Prime, locked and loaded. Awaiting your command.”

  * * *

  The creature was aware of the thing following it. It had thought that whatever it was would be easy prey, just like the other new things it had found on awakening from its long hibernation. Instead, it had found that this thing had teeth, and had come away from the encounter wounded. Not badly. In fact, not more than superficially. But any injury was to be avoided if possible, because it never knew when that wound might be enough to incapacitate or kill.

  The creature thought of itself as a Gatherer. It gathered both the basic elements and life energy of the creatures it fed upon, which was anything that was not itself. It was careful to not strip the planet of all life during its periods of activity, consuming only about ninety percent of all life forms, leaving the rest to repopulate. Then it slept for a millennia or more in the sheltered deep of the world, arising again to feed. Some forms went extinct due to its predation, new species arose. It was not important in the scheme of things. It was only important that there continued to be life on this world that it could prey on, building its reserves, spawning new versions of itself, until they were once again ready to spread. Each cycle, they ate a greater percentage of the life. In a few more cycles they would eat the planet clean, and then use the energy to leave, looking for greener pastures.

  The Gatherer propelled itself through the water by grabbing free electrons from the ocean ahead and accelerating it through the mass of its body, a sort of ion drive that gave it a much greater turn of speed that any of the life forms that used purely mechanical means. It would eventually use the same method to leave this world, then use its own mass to propel itself across interstellar distances. It brought nutrients and other compounds into its body by the normal method of engulfing and internal transport, but could also use quantum teleportation to supply the inner regions of its body with much needed energy. And it could sense movement through sea, air or space for great distances through ripples in space/time itself, the method it was using to track the thing that had hurt it.

  The new arrivals were like nothing its species had ever encountered. Its own memory was long, since it was essentially a single celled organism that reproduced by fission, and therefore was immortal. It could remember when it’s primordial seed had fallen from the sky, one of thousands that had started from its home cluster, a small dwarf galaxy tens of millions of light years from the world it was now located. All life had been consumed in that mass of twenty million stars, including its point of origin. Including those who had been responsible for its creation. The surviving Gatherers had all started off for separate destinations, all as enormous life forms hundreds kilometers or more across. It knew not the fate of the others, and doubted that more than a few had made it to fertile ground, since all would have been in the same state as itself when they reached a star system, that of a small mass incapable of going to another star without building up its mass and energy. Without a living world, most would be doomed to eternal hibernation in systems devoid of life. It might be the only one of its kind with a hope of spreading. With multiple copies of itself able to move from this star to nearby systems, where they would be able to move on if they didn’t find what they needed, their spread in this Galaxy was almost guaranteed.

  But with these creatures, which had obviously arrived from another star system, meaning they had interstellar travel, all bets were off. They could stop the Gatherers before they could move on. At first they had seemed as helpless as any of the natural species of the planet. More advanced technologically, but still outclasses in most respects. Until this new thing had come, which had the ability to hurt it. And once they knew they could hurt it, they would come up with a means to kill it.

  It reached seventy kilometers under the waves, the deepest part of this section of the ocean floor. A couple of kilometers ahead was the entrance to its lair, leading down another ten kilometers, to the point where water started transforming into Ice II. It had reached the entrance to the lair and was about to head down when it detected two smaller objects leaving the thing, both heading in its direction at a high rate of speed for the liquid environment. It didn’t know what they were, but was sure that they were not intended to benefit it or its kind. It established a quantum connection with the other members of its species and sent out the warning, then continued to send through the secure instantaneous pathway as the object came in.

  * * *

  “Fire,” shouted Jensen as the creature stopped its forward motion, then started to drop toward a five kilometer wide opening that led down to further depths. The twin weapons came rushing out of their tubes, exiting the submarine at two hundred kilometers an hour. As soon as they were free they released their bubble sheathes and sped off, accelerating at twenty gravities, adding almost point two kilometers a second to their velocity. In six seconds they were traveling at over a kilometer a second, the maximum Jensen intended, allowing her sub to get out of the danger zone before they struck. In less than thirty seconds they were at the target, which was swiftly disappearing into the opening.

  The submarine went to full rise the moment the torps were away, gaining a hundred meters a second while it veered off to put some horizontal distance between itself and the weapons. She had risen three kilometers verticle, while boosting away for four kilometers horizontal.

  “Brace for impact,” shouted Kama as t
he torps reached their target. They detonated in a brilliant flare, each releasing ten megatons of explosive power, building up a crushing wave of pressure at the depth while the blast wave traversed upward at supersonic speed.

  The wave struck the sub, increasing hull pressure by several times that imparted by the depth it was at. The sub was made to withstand that short term pressure, but the turbulence still rocked it and its crew back and forth. All were in their armor, either the suits worn for excursions, or the battle rigs meant to protect the crew while inside the vessel. The suits were all locked into place in seats or cubbies, but the motion still threw the crew around in the limited space of their armor. Padding prevented much movement, and the most that would come of the turbulence was bumps and bruises.

  “What’s the status of the target?” shouted Jensen, staring at the plot that now showed nothing but the bottom.

  “Unable to determine,” said Kama, playing with the gain controls on his board. “The blast has stirred up millions of tons of bottom mud. I recommend sending a remote down to take a look.”

  “Go ahead,” ordered the Major. They had a quartet of the remotely piloted vehicles aboard, and chances were they would get this one back if the torpedoes had destroyed the creature. If not, then they at least would know it was still alive.

  The submarine dropped the two meter long remote, Kama taking control and guiding it downward. Little showed up on the sonar, the ocean reverberating from the nuclear blasts less than a minute in the past. They were getting some return on the lidar, which was only affected a bit by the swirling water. The return showed a clear picture of the bottom, and a somewhat blurry image of the opening. The rock edges of the opening were showing crumbling, while mud from the bottom continued to slide in.

  “I’m like to probe that opening,” said Kama, maneuvering the remote over the hole.

  “Go ahead. But be ready to back it out if you run into anything.”

  Kama nodded and moved the remote forward, entering the hole at the very center. It was too silted up to get a visual, a state that might last for days. The infrared sensors were just about useless as well with all of the heat swirling through the water and coming off the cooling rocks.

  “Radar image firming up,” announced the Master Sergeant. “Sonar is still useless. I have something ahead, moving.”

  “So, it’s still alive,” said Jensen, glaring at the screen showing the radar plot. “Launch another torp. Maneuver it in slowly, so we can get it deep into that opening.”

  Kama backed the remote out while he launched another torpedo, leaving the sub with only three more in its magazine. It took several minutes to move it down, while the remote moved ten kilometers up, constantly observing the hole. It would still be at risk there, but the Major wanted to see what happened, or as much of it as there was to see.

  At the moment the torpedo got to its desired placement something started coming out of the hole, looking like a jelly suspended in the water.

  * * *

  The Gatherer could feel the waves of energy bouncing off of it from above. Light energy, radio waves, sound. The explosion that had occurred minutes before had been enough to hurt it, severely. It thought if it had been out in the open it would have been destroyed. As it was, it had lost about a quarter of its mass. It had been a battle to reconstitute that much of its membrane before it lost even more mass.

  The others of its kind had been made aware of what had happened. They now knew that the newcomers to the planet were dangerous, possibly deadly to the Gatherer’s kind. Since all of them were the same creature, separated physically but one in all other respects, a consensus had been reached in an instant. They would attack the newcomers, destroy them and all of their works. It was possible that more would show up in the future. When was unknown, but it would have to be risked. Either they would come too late, or they would not be the hunters of the newcomers such as were trying to kill it now. If there were more hunters, and they came soon, it might be the end. If they came months later, the Gatherers could harvest all the organics and life energy of this world and leave. More planets, more Gatherers, until they reached the mass where no other life form could threaten them. Then this Galaxy would be theirs.

  It could feel the device the hunters had sent down to its lair, using similar energies to those it could itself use to see the world around it. But the device backed off at a high acceleration, and the creature could sense the danger heading its way. With a thought it started cycling electrons through its body, accelerating like an ion space drive through the water. It had just reached some of its further parts out of the lair when that which it sensed came. It could feel the power of the weapon building, then it flared as the hydrogen within fused, converting into a miniature sun under the water. The heat and radiation struck, and the Gatherer could feel the outer layers of its body fragment, while the blast wave pushed it back into the lair. The blast pushed it deep while over half of its mass dissolved into basic molecules under the assault.

  As what was left of the creature fell into the ten kilometer deep abyss, the crumbling rock and mud fell around it, until it was trapped under kilometers of debris. While still alive, it was trapped, without the organic molecules needed to produce enough acid to eat its way through. It didn’t possess enough mass to burn its way through with energy. Unless one of its kind freed it, it would remain here forever.

  The minds of the other Gatherers came over the entangled link, aware of the plight of their sibling, unable to waste the time on one so injured. In fourteen other lairs across the deeps they rose, orienting themselves, then heading off toward the shallows. Their species was going to war, and it would be them or the newcomers.

  * * *

  “Leave the remote in place, Master Sergeant,” ordered the Major. “I think we’ve got it, but I want to monitor this area, just in case.”

  “What do you want to do now, ma’am,” asked the Warrant Officer, bringing up a map of the world.

  “That might not be the only one, Major,” said the Master Sergeant, pulling up a holo at his station that showed all of the reported attacks with their time stamps.

  “I don’t believe it is, Tapuarii,” replied Jensen, shrugging her shoulders. “But I also don’t think we have enough to pinpoint the other lairs at this time.” The Major looked back at her pilot. “Get us back to the capital, post haste. We’ll see if the Governor and his staff have developed any new intelligence while we rest and rearm.”

  Zaya nodded and turned back to her board, bringing the sub to the surface, then powering its grabber units and raising it into the air for the swift flight back to the capital. Jensen thought about what they would need to do when they got back, trying to locate the areas of operations for the other members of this species. Which didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy some drinks and some decent food before they had to go back out again.

  * * *

  The Gatherer cruised into the shallows just fifty meters under the surface, almost an equal distance from the bottom. It was essentially the same bluish gray as the water, and cover of night added to its invisibility. It was on the hunt, on a mission to hurt the newcomers as much as possible. Which didn’t mean it was going to rush into a situation that might cause it more damage than it did to the enemy. Slow and careful would be its mantra this evening. Using its electron propulsion to move at thirty knots, it slid like a ghost through the sea, its own senses questing ahead. It could feel the movements of schools of sea life, the different motions of the larger air breathers the newcomers had brought along with them. It could feel none of the artificial emanations of the newcomer’s tech, and only a few stray distant echoes from the natural sonar of their sea creatures.

  Through its quantum connection with the other thirteen members of its species, it could see that all were penetrating into the most populated areas of the newcomer settlements. Two were close to detection sources and were having to work their way around them, but most had found unguarded paths through.

 
; The Gatherer noted that the water was growing lighter, the sign that day was approaching, and with it the increased chance of detection. The creature allowed itself to sink down to the bottom, sliding its body back and forth to cover itself in sand. There it lay still, waiting for the day to pass and the night to come again so that it could move on unseen.

  Later that night it would join with another of its kind, consolidating into a larger, more powerful creature. Other members would do the same, until there were only five of the creatures, much better able to handle the damage they were sure to sustain.

  * * *

  “It looks like the one you killed might have been the only one,” said Colonel Neru M’tabasa, the Chief of Planetary Police. “It’s an exact chemical match for the samples we’ve found at some of the other attacks, down to the quantum resonances of the atoms..”

  “I hope so, Colonel,” said Major Jensen, a frown on her face. “However, being as it seems to be some kind of protoplasmic creature, and most probably reproduces by some sort of fission, I wouldn’t get too hasty with conclusions like that.”

  “So you think there may be more than one of these things, but they all originated from the one creature?” asked Governor Frieze.

  “That’s what Sergeant Billings believes,” said Jensen, nodding her head as she reached for her wine glass. “He’s my resident biology expert.”

  “And the biology faculty at our local university agrees with your sergeant,” said Colonel Suarez with a grimace that showed how much she hated to admit that the Constabulary might be correct.

  “So we have no way of telling how many of these things there are,” said the Governor after a deep swallow of his drink. “Not what I wanted to hear.”

  “And I’m sorry about that, sir,” said Jensen, putting her own glass back on the table half empty. “I really wanted to have better news for you.”

  “You did bring me some good news, Major Jensen. After all, you did kill the thing that attack Humbolt village.”