Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

  She put the shotgun down lengthwise on the bed, stripped off her boots and lay down on the bed next to it. This was the bed they had spent many blissful country mornings in, listening to the faint call of the chaparral’s song birds in the morning’s slant light or savoring the soft hiss and moan of the evening breeze through the pine tree just outside.

  Getting to sleep was difficult and had been for some time. When she tried, her thoughts invariably went to Phil; and when they did, a pain would come to her midsection and she would sometimes yield to it and twist tight into a knot, her arms wrapped around her knees. But tonight she resisted and lay, eyes open, feeling the pain of a grief without benefit of closure and prayed for it to end. Her hand rested on her womb as it had a hundred times in the last few days. At least I have you, she thought. At least I have you.

  Finally, hours later, she dozed off.

  * * *

  The deep bass note reverberated through the bones in her head and, at first, she was certain she was dreaming it. When she bent up out of bed, strained awake and still aware of the sound, the sense of danger was palpable. She drew the shotgun closer to her and slipped on her boots. By the time she got to the front door and peeked through the slit in the curtains, the only sound she heard was the pounding of her heart in her ears.

  Linda moved quietly from window to window, looking out and skyward for the source of the sound. Seeing nothing out the back or side windows, she returned to the front door and looked again. The full moon illuminated the rolling landscape with its gray and ghost-like cast. She strained to see farther down the road leading to the cabin. Shapes of boulders and clumps of juniper and sage lined the road as it bent down around the hill. As she watched, heart racing, a gray and shadowy little shape near the end of the road seemed to shift and move. She felt her mouth fill with cotton.

  As the shape continued to morph, she could make out the unmistakable movement of what appeared to be legs, but the shape seemed to shift larger to smaller and she couldn’t make sense out of the shape. Suddenly, all the talk from Phil about the way the aliens mixed and matched parts and combined them into new physiologies came into sharp relief in her mind. She was sure that she was seeing precisely one of those abominations. She jammed the muzzle of the shotgun against the glass, put her shoulder against the stock, leaned in and pushed out the pane. The glass broke with a crunch, and the shards fell out onto the wood porch with a crash. Her thumb found the safety on the shotgun and clicked it off.

  She could see the shape moving with its multiple legs straight at the cabin. A moment later, she was able to make out that the shape wasn’t a single entity but simply a cluster of people walking, and she felt a surge of relief. She unlatched the door, moved the chair out of the way and then grabbed the flashlight from the table next to the door. She went outside, shotgun at the ready, clicked the powerful light on and pointed it down the road.

  The cluster of people gazed back into the light. There were four of them, but the only one Linda Purdy saw was Phil. She cried out his name.

  * * *

  Phil was leaning against the shower wall with his arms straight out letting the water beat down on his neck and back, his eyes closed as if sleeping in the steaming spray. Linda could see the incredible network of fine scars on his body. Not one square inch seemed devoid of thin, straight and red scars. Some were bright red, others paler; some short, some longer. She reached into the shower and lightly touched his shoulder as if to soothe the pain she was sure had once enraged that spot. Startled at the touch, he opened his eyes.

  “How long have I been gone?” he asked, his eyes drifting closed again.

  “Twenty one days,” she said drying a tear. “But who counted?”

  * * *

  Dressed in some of Linda’s spare clothing, Mary and Bailey spooned together on the large sofa, their eyes open and distant. The Indian was dressed in a pair of Phil’s shorts, three sizes too large, and sat on the rug with the same distant expression. Phil walked out of the bedroom and sat down heavily in the Morris chair. Linda sat at his feet and wrapped her arms around his legs. No one made a sound for many minutes. Finally, Bailey began to whimper; and when the whimpering changed to crying, Mary held her closer and gently whispered to her and stroked her hair. When Linda looked at Phil, he was covering his eyes with one hand. She was sure no therapy existed for their particular malady.

  * * *

  The next morning while the others slept, Linda, still armed and vigilant, found Bailey sitting in the warm sun on the porch, sipping coffee from a large white mug, her knees drawn up tight. Linda sat down next to her with own cup, took a sip and looked over at Bailey with a kind smile. Linda had seen the strange physical modifications on Bailey’s arms, legs and hands the night before. She could see a large sucker on the palm of one hand and wondered if such a thing might be able to be removed surgically. The idea that such a thing could have been attached the same way was unfathomable to her.

  “Good morning,” Linda said.

  “We killed the ship, you know,” Bailey said flatly. “We killed it.”

  “I know,” Linda said. “Phil explained it all last night.”

  “I’m glad we killed it,” Bailey said. “But some of them escaped. I wish we had killed them all. I would have killed them all if I could have. I would have murdered them all with a hammer, or burned them alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” Bailey asked Linda. She’d asked it like a child would ask the nearest random adult about anything at all.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Linda said. “But if I had to guess I’d say no.”

  “That’s good,” Bailey said. “I hope they don’t ever come back.”

  “Who knows,” Linda said. “Now that we have one of their craft, maybe we can figure it out, and the next time, we’ll invade their planet,” she paused then added, “If not us, maybe our children, or our children’s children.”

  She rested her hand on her womb again. When Phil was feeling better and she was sure he was recovering, she’d tell him she was pregnant with his child. It was something they both wanted.

  “I hope when we get there we kill them all,” Bailey said. “We should kill them all like ants.”

  “Yes.”

  Linda took another drink of coffee and watched a large black and yellow wasp swoop back and forth like a pendulum inches from her feet, intent on the scent trail of something edible in or around the porch. She hated yellow jackets. They were always looking for a bit of meat and were often bold enough to land right on your plate to try to take it. She kicked at it with a booted foot. “Shoo,” she said to it.

  Bailey had seen it, too. Linda could see the fear in Bailey’s eyes.

  “Those won’t bother you,” Linda told her. “They’re a native species.”

  dominant species

  Part Two

  edge effects

  Dominant Species Volume Two: Edge Effects

  Copyright © 2007 by David Coy, All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher or the author, with the exception of brief quotes used in reviews. Contact the publisher for information on foreign rights.

  Cover art by Ivaylo Nikolov.

  For more information on this title, characters, and forthcoming books in this series, www.DominantSpeciesOnline.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 1-4196-6838-2 EAN-13: 978-1-4196-6838-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007902031

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Nature does nothing uselessly. —Aristotle

  T
he year 3012

  1

  “Fire.”

  The charge went off with a dull thud that sent its pulse through Howard’s feet. He didn’t quite know how, but he could always tell when the shot was a good one. It was getting near dusk, and the bugs were fierce. He brushed a particularly nasty one away from his face netting so he could see. He leaned over the display and watched as the picture came back.

  “What are you getting?” Carla asked over his shoulder.

  “Not much. Marginal. Maybe enough.”

  “Hit the jackpot again, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Some bauxite, lead, even copper ore, I think. Look at this.”

  They watched the display as the shot’s resonance echoed through the subterranean layers and returned data to the sensors.

  “Is that it?” Carla asked, pointing to a spike on the screen.

  “Right. The copper.”

  “Shit,” she said.

  Howard flashed her a look. “Fire two and five. I want a good harmonic.”

  Carla worked the detonator, and a moment later two more charges thudded through the ground in quick succession.

  “There it is. It’s copper ore all right. One thin vein, about a hundred and forty meters thick. Low concentration but probably worth the effort.”

  “So long little planet,” she said without a hint of humor. “Maybe. Mining ain’t a pretty sight when it happens.”

  “Nope.”

  They studied the display a moment longer. Carla absently brushed a big ugly crawler from the screen.

  “That’s a hell of an admission from two geologists,” Howard said finally.

  Carla sucked a big breath through her nose and turned away, taking in a sweeping look at the jungle just meters outside the little clearing. “Did you ever see such plant and animal life, Howard? Look at this foliage! Christ, it would take a thousand years to catalog the plant life alone!”

  Howard acted as if he were barely hearing her.

  “There’s a bunch of it,” he said absently.

  “How long did it take to get like this? A billion years? Ten billion?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, five billion. I bet it took five billion years at least. Look at the ferns. They’re beautiful.”

  “Yep.”

  “And the blooms! Look at those blooms! I bet you couldn’t grow those anywhere else in the universe.”

  “Could be,” he said distractedly.

  “They should . . . they should turn this planet into a park, never to be dist . . . disturbed.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “They ought to just leave it alone.”

  “Not likely.”

  “It’s too beautiful, too . . . fertile . . . ”

  She filled her lungs through her nose. “Smell!” she said, breathing in. “It’s like a greenhouse filled with orchids! Oh, smell that!”

  She was completely taken with the planet’s organic splendor. It had taken him hours to get her out of the jungle and focused on the business at hand.

  The jungle was remarkable.

  It was like the pictures he’d seen of the fabled Amazon basin, but thicker and higher, and it covered every square meter of the planet that wasn’t water. They’d flown for hours over the endless rolling sea of dark green, marveling at its uniformity and richness. They saw no mountains to speak of, just rolling, green terrain broken only by the irregular band of a shallow sea that wrapped the globe, or an occasional outcropping forced up from below. Patches of thick, low clouds drifted at treetop level and supplied a constant source of fresh rainwater. They watched lightning flash in continual bursts and felt the boom of thunder through the shuttle’s skin as they passed the storms. The planet was primordial. It boiled with unparalleled biological richness and vitality.

  The red sun shone its light and heat into that wet greenhouse, and the result was wild and wondrous growth. They’d been on the planet for less than twenty-four hours and had seen hundreds of alien insects and plants just in their immediate vicinity.

  “What happens to all this!” Carla exclaimed, her arms out wide.

  It was Howard’s turn to suck air. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said, frustrated with her idle, romantic talk.

  “You know as well as I do what’ll happen here,” she said.

  “I don’t know. This one’s pretty far. There’s not that much payload here, either. It’ll be costly to develop, more so than Fuji. But what do I know?”

  “But the payoff will be enormous, right? You as much as said so. You said copper. The distance and the cost is nothing compared to the copper.”

  What I said was that there’s not that much. I don’t know . . . ”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Howard stuck his head back in the display pretending to study the data. “It’s not up to us.”

  “Howard, how much do they reduce your debt by doing this kind of work?”

  “A little more than you. What’s your point?”

  “You get paydowns even if you don’t find the gold, right?”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “I’m saying they don’t reduce our debt enough to do this kind of work.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m saying we could save it, Howard. All we have to do is send up bogus data from one of those dead balls we surveyed earlier this year, modified a little—you know—just to make it look real. I can do that.”

  “Send in bogus data?”

  “Yes! They’ll go away; they’ll leave it alone! And we’ll still get our reductions. What does it matter to Richthaus? Nobody would give a shit. They can find another planet to rape, not this one.”

  “They might put us in jail for that.”

  “So what?”

  “So what? I don’t want to go to jail—that’s so what. Forget it.”

  Carla stared at him for a moment, then turned around and ambled over to the shuttle, opened the hatch and went inside. “Crazy . . . ” Howard said watching her.

  She’d always been a little on the fringe of things; somewhat disconnected from the mainstream. Some would say a little out of focus. That trait might have been what attracted him to her in the first place.

  They’d met when she was working for her certification. Howard was her teacher at the time. To receive certification as Grade I Geology was difficult and demanding; not for the faint of heart or weak of will, and Carla barely made it. Her head was never quite with the program. She was just as interested in music as she was in geology—something Howard could never quite fathom. A-Grade at the time, Howard annotated her file and recommended that she spend another two years as an apprentice to him as a condition of certification. Since they were sleeping together by then anyway, it worked out just fine. She eventually caught on and received her grade. They were married a year after that.

  When he took the contract with Richthaus-Alvarez Mining and Exploration, he negotiated for a personal assistant. Carla was the logical and emotional choice. If he were going to travel, he insisted, he wanted his wife along. They’d been off-world for nearly a decade now. The paydown was good there was plenty of good work, and he spent every day with the woman he loved.

  Working together and living together sometimes work out perfectly.

  The shuttle made a less than desirable permanent home, but that didn’t matter to them. It was mobile in the extreme, and that had its obvious advantages. With their paydowns going as fast as they were, they’d have a good retirement in another twenty years, no sweat, and a nice new permanent shelter would be waiting at the end.

  * * *

  It rained that night in a steady downpour. Lightning flashed in close intervals, and the thunder, like a giant soft hammer, rumbled against the shuttle’s stiff hull. The sound of the rain was a distant and gentle hiss.

  Howard woke up at the height of the storm. He turned in his bunk, and noticed that Carla wasn’t in hers. He assumed she was in the toilet and tried for a few more
minutes to get back to sleep; but the thunder wouldn’t let him. When he rolled again and saw that she still hadn’t returned, he got up to see where she was.

  He couldn’t imagine that she was outside, but the shuttle was small, and it took him less than a minute to determine that she wasn’t inside.

  He went to the side port and looked out, pressing his nose tight against the thick window.

  Illuminated by the staccato brilliance of the lightning, her head turned up to the sky, her mouth wide open, Carla was standing naked in the rain, with her arms outstretched. Howard thought at first he was dreaming. He was aware of the wild streak in her, but this was unusual even for her.

  There were biological dangers, seen and unseen, on any unexplored planet—especially for the first ones in. It was bad enough during the daylight hours when most of the life forms were visible. The cloak of night shrouded them in greater mystery. It was unthinkable to be outside—naked—on a night like this on a planet as biologically ripe as this one.

  She’s nuts.

  The pouring rain seemed to have kept the insects down at least. It was pitch dark between flashes, and her ghostly image vanished completely in the blackness between them as if it had blinked out of existence entirely.

  “Christ. What’s she doing . . . ? ”

  It was strange. But Carla was strange. Howard watched silently, until, finally, he smiled a painful little smile. If she wanted to commune with the primal spirit of this green planet by standing naked in its pouring rain at night, so be it.

  As he watched her run her hands back over her face and hair, the image transformed from macabre to strangely beautiful. He could almost feel the peppering rain that splashed off her smooth skin, and the cool rivulets running down her belly and legs. The tangled pattern of the foliage made a vivid and baroque background for her pale form.