The Mothership

by Renneberg, Stephen

  “That’s a freaking big lizard!” Nuke declared anxiously.

  One of the navy hands laughed, shaking his head, “Mate, they get a lot bigger than that!”

  “Is it safe to go ashore now?” Beckman asked.

  “Nope, but you’ve got your orders,” the lieutenant said with an amused grin. He turned to the sailors along the sides. “See any more?” No one responded, so the lieutenant moved aside. “Good luck, Major.”

  They shook hands, then Beckman walked down the gangplank, splashed once in the water and jumped up onto the bank, pulling himself up through mangrove roots. Hooper went next, followed by the rest of the team, straining under the weight of their packs. Dr McInness stumbled, but was saved from falling into the water by Tucker, who hauled him up onto dry land.

  Hooper whispered to Beckman, “For a guy with no weapon and no ammo, he’s carrying a lot of gear.”

  “I know. He’ll be flat on his face in two hours, then we’ll strip him.”

  The patrol boat’s crew retrieved the gangplank, then the boat’s engines revved, pulling the bow free of the mud.

  “Make sure you cut across country,” the lieutenant yelled from the bow. “The river banks will be crawling with crocs, especially at night.”

  One of the ratings added from the deck, “Then you’ve only got the bloody snakes and spiders to worry about.”

  The rest of the crew broke into fits of laughter. Marooning the Americans in the middle of nowhere was a great joke to them.

  “Why do I feel like a greenhorn?” Hooper said under his breath as he watched the patrol boat back away.

  “Because out here,” Beckman replied in an equally low voice, “You are!”

  The laughing sailors gave them a hearty wave for good luck as the high tech patrol boat spun slowly on its length, then headed back down the river toward the Gulf. The thrum of its big engines slowly faded as it disappeared around the bend, leaving them with the feeling that they were now truly alone.

  Beckman took a compass bearing, studied the luxuriant rain forest a moment, then turned to the team. “From here on, we’re advancing to contact. We’ve got eighty clicks of this stuff ahead of us,” he said indicating the prehistoric forest around them, “So pace yourselves.” He turned to Orlando Cougar Sanchez, the sniper in Hooper’s force protection squad. “Cougar, you’re on point.”

  Cougar nodded, expecting the order. He was always on point. A man of few words, he had ice water in his veins and eyes like an eagle. Beckman had picked the swarthy sniper from east LA because he could hit a dime at a thousand meters with monotonous regularity, and had the rare ability to move through any terrain without being seen. Top of his class at Kaneohe Bay, veteran of multiple combat tours in the middle east, then a scout sniper instructor, his patience and calm were impenetrable no matter what chaos was erupting around him.

  “Hooper, will cover our rear,” Beckman continued. “Dr McInness, Mr Markus, you’re with me. If there’s any combat, you’re to hit the deck and stay there until I give the all clear. Understood?”

  Markus nodded while Dr McInness adjusted his glasses and continued fishing through his pack, searching for something.

  “Dr McInness? Did you hear what I said?”

  The young scientist looked up, “Ah yes, I did. Thank you, Major. It’s good to know you’re prepared, but I’m sure we won’t be fighting anyone.”

  Beckman looked surprised. “Are you?”

  Dr McInness looked distracted. “No advanced civilization is going to attack the Earth. What would be the point? They don’t need our resources, they have the entire galaxy for that. Our atmosphere is probably poison to them and, well let’s face it, we’re just too primitive to be of much interest to them.”

  “Maybe they want to eat us,” Nuke taunted.

  “Unlikely,” Dr McInness said. “That ship is down for repairs. It’s the only rational explanation. Unfortunately, it will be gone long before we get there.”

  “Nevertheless, if any shooting starts,” Beckman said, “I want to see your face in the dirt. Clear?”

  Dr McInness nodded absently, “Certainly Major, if it makes you feel better.” He finally retrieved what he’d been searching for, a can of insect repellent, which he proceeded to spray all over himself, much to the amusement of the troops.

  Steamer whispered to Tucker, “Fifty bucks! Looking good.”

  “You should have given me four to one.”

  Hooper wrinkled his nose at the sweet smelling insecticide. “With that shit on, they’ll smell us coming.”

  Dr McInness stuffed the insect repellent back in his pack and turned towards Hooper. “I doubt that, Sergeant. Considering they won’t be breathing our atmosphere, it will be impossible for them to smell us.” He paused as a thought struck him, “Unless of course they’re analyzing air samples. Hmm! I hadn’t thought of that! You might be right, Sergeant.”

  Beckman exchanged looks with Hooper then turned to Cougar. “Move out. Due west. Nice and quiet.”

  Cougar nodded, then climbed the small rise to flat land, and started west. The rest of the team fanned out behind him, while Hooper moved to the rear. The sergeant stopped, his eyes narrowing on the river.

  “Hold it!” he yelled, as he clambered down to the bank and peered through the trees. “Smoke, Major!”

  Beckman hurried down to where Hooper stood, following his gaze down river. Rising beyond the mangroves separating them from the Gulf waters was a column of thick black smoke.

  “It’s near the river mouth,” Beckman said.

  Markus raised his binoculars, studying the acrid black smoke. “It’s a diesel fire. Got to be the patrol boat.”

  Beckman saw Dr McInness watching the column of smoke uncertainly. “Still think there’s no threat, Doctor?”

  “I’m sure there’s a rational explanation,” Dr McInness replied uncomfortably. “A fire in the engine room? A fuel problem? Who knows?”

  “Should we hike to the coast, Major?” Timer asked. “See if we can help?”

  “No,” Markus said flatly. “We can’t afford the time.”

  Beckman glanced irritably at Markus. A lifetime in the military demanded he help the crew, but the mission ruled out any such luxury. “Markus is right. We can’t help them,” he said, hating himself for saying it.

  “Want me to try to contact them with the short wave, sir?” Sergeant Michael Virus Kirovsky asked. He was the team’s communications specialist, carrying both their long range radio and a small recovered communications device that could pick up signals conventional radios could not.

  Beckman shook his head. “No. The signal would give away our position. Tactical radios only until further notice.” The tactical radios were designed to emit weak signals that faded into background noise within five kilometers, limiting the risk of detection.

  Solemnly, they climbed the hill, then headed into a vast steaming landscape that had changed little in sixty million years. Roland Markus scarcely noticed his surrounds, as he wondered if his burst transmission had caused the destruction of the patrol boat. Even though the signal had lasted only a fraction of a second, it may have been enough to invite an attack. He realized he would have to be careful using the burst transmitter in the future.

  A few paces ahead, Beckman was plagued by ominous thoughts. How had the patrol boat been destroyed? And why?

  * * * *

  Slab slipped out of his backpack and reached inside for the gray insulation bag, feeling for a cold beer. The ex-AFL football player flicked ice from the can, careful not to waste even a single precious cube, then slid the can out and meticulously resealed the thermal bag.

  Bill McKenna, a pub owner from Darwin, watched the big man tear off the ring pull and take a long swig of beer. “Jeez mate, you’re knocking them back fast!”

  Slab swallowed, then exhaled with pleasure. “They’re the only things keeping me going.” He wiped sweat from his forehead, rejuvenated by the cool amber liquid.

  Slab’s th
ree friends exchanged amused looks, then Wal Roberts chimed in, “When they’re all gone, don’t come begging for mine.” Wal, half the size of Slab, had spent the past twenty years shearing on every station from Katherine to Broken Hill. He was tough as boot leather and half as bright.

  “I’m saving mine for later,” Cracker, a miner from the Pilbara, declared. “We won’t get back to camp for hours.”

  Slab’s face fell. “Hours!” He shook his head miserably. “We should have stayed on the river.” He adjusted his sweat-soaked akubra hat, trying to squeeze a little extra shade from its positioning. He’d expected the heat, but not the bush bashing. Slab had assumed they’d be cruising around in Bill’s fishing boat, never going out of sight of the river. It came as a great surprise to him that his mates actually wanted to hunt, as he’d assumed the hunting was just an excuse to get away from the wives. Three days ago, they’d driven Bill’s four-by-four down the Central Arnhem Road, towing his boat on a trailer along the treacherous gravel track. After several hundred kilometers, they had turned south onto an even worse track. It took them west of Bath Range, down to the Ngilipitji Community, where they slid Bill’s half cabin fishing boat into the Walker River. Once afloat, they motored upstream twenty kilometers before making camp. Next day, to Slab’s disgust, the hiking began.

  Bill shook his head, dismayed at Slab’s lack of enthusiasm. “Mate, do you know how hard it is to get a license to get in here?” They were hunting Asian water buffalo, an introduced species that had to be culled from time to time, providing hunters could be found to go after them.

  “Can’t believe we paid money for this,” Slab growled, irritated that they hadn’t yet seen a single buffalo.

  “Well,” Wal said, “If we don’t find any buffalo, we can shoot Slab and nick his beer! He’s as big as a buffalo, and he smells like one too!”

  Cracker shook his head in mock seriousness. “I say we shoot him now, before it’s too late. If we wait, he’ll have drunk it all.”

  Slab belched, unconcerned by their threats. “If you bastards don’t shut up, I’ll drink all of mine now, and help you with yours later,” he said with a wicked grin.

  Wal scratched his head with a worried look. “Hmm, we better get stuck into ours, before he’s finished his!”

  Slab drained the can, then crushed it in one hand and stuffed the remains back in his pack. They might have been out for a week away, but they hated people who left trash in the bush. “My pack’s lighter now,” Slab said with satisfaction.

  Wal was about to offer a response when the bushes off to the left rustled. Bill had his rifle up first, sighting toward the sound, while the others unslung their guns.

  “Is it a buffalo?” Cracker whispered.

  “Probably another bloody kangaroo,” Slab said.

  Some distance away, thick green plants were pushed aside as an unseen creature forced its way through the undergrowth. They strained to hear heavy hoof falls and snorting breathes, but heard only the plants being disturbed.

  “If it’s a buffalo,” Slab said, realizing they should have seen the animal’s broad shoulders above the foliage, “It’s a baby.”

  “Go forward,” Bill whispered, “Quietly.”

  The four of them crept toward the underbrush, working their way through the trees as the creature moved to the south.

  “It’s getting away,” Wal whispered.

  “This is bullshit,” Slab growled. “Get ready fellas.” He picked up a large rock and took aim at the movement now about twenty meters away.

  “What are you doing?” Bill demanded.

  “We can’t shoot it, unless we know it’s a buffalo.” Slab hurled the rock into the bushes, then they all heard a dull metallic thud.

  “That’s not a buffalo!” Bill said confused.

  A long, black, oval shape floated up out of the bushes and turned toward them. A glowing white strip ran the length of its underside, while four tubular, jointed arms protruded from either side, giving the machine a spider-like appearance. At the end of its arms were slender knife-shaped probes, each slightly different in length and thickness signaling they served different purposes. Rising twenty centimeters from the machine’s spine was a thin cylinder topped by a glassy black disk housing the surveying machine’s sensor package. The surveyor floated over the bushes, scanning them as it approached. Its primary interest was geology and metallurgy, although it could gather information outside its specialty when the opportunity arose. It already knew from its initial spectral analysis that the four bipedal life forms nearby carried steel objects, indicating they had access to basic industrial technology, although it did not recognize the rifles were primitive weapons.

  “What the hell is that?” Slab exclaimed.

  The surveyor shot toward Slab, its two leading arms aiming their knife-like probes at his chest.

  Cracker fired first, then Bill and Wal opened up on it a moment later. The surveyor wobbled as bullets shredded its power system, then it exploded, sending black metal fragments in all directions, and a knife-like arm spearing into the tree beside Slab. He stared at it, shocked. A few centimeters closer, and it would have been embedded in his face.

  “We sure blew the shit out of that thing!” Cracker exclaimed proudly, always fond of loud explosions.

  Bill recovered a metal fragment and turned it over in his hand curiously. “Ever seen anything like this before?”

  Cracker took the fragment and tested the weight. “It’s light! I thought for a sec it was a balloon.”

  “At least we got to shoot something,” Wal said happily.

  “Speak for yourself,” Slab snapped. “You bastards didn’t give me a chance to get a bloody shot away.”

  “We should report it,” Bill said. “Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be here.”

  “No way.” Cracker shook his head emphatically. “Looks expensive. Whoever owns it might try to stick us for the cost.”

  “The bloody thing nearly poked my eye out,” Slab growled, “No way I’m paying for it.”

  “Whatever it was, it’s scrap metal now,” Bill said, retrieving the metal souvenir from Cracker and slipping it into his backpack.

  Slab pulled his mobile phone from a pocket and handed it to Cracker. “Here, take a photo!” He stood beside the remains of the machine, with his boot triumphantly on the metal hull.

  Cracker hesitated. “But you didn’t even shoot it.”

  “No one will know,” Slab said with a mischievous grin.

  Cracker shrugged and snapped a photo of Slab. “That’s evidence that could be used against you.”

  “Screw that,” Slab said, as he took back the camera and reviewed the photo. “Not bad.”

  “So where to?” Cracker asked.

  “There’s not much out here,” Bill said. “Let’s head back to camp and get the barbie going.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Slab said, reaching into his pack for another cold beer.

  * * * *

  Beckman scanned the tree tops, searching in vain for the source of the strange warbling that echoed through the forest. The kookaburra’s brown and white feathers made it almost invisible in the shadows of the forest canopy, while its call reminded him of crazed laughter.

  Laughing at us? Beckman wondered as he began to appreciate how the oppressive heat and the monotonous insect buzz were going to tax both body and mind.

  Nuke slapped the back of his neck and cursed. “Man! These bugs are eating me alive.”

  “They’re females,” Vamp explained with mock sympathy, “Looking for fresh meat.”

  “Way to go, man,” Timer said, “You’re finally getting attention from the opposite sex.”

  Behind them, they heard a grunt as Dr McInness tripped and fell face-first into a broad-leafed plant. His pack rattled with metal devices, then its weight dragged him sideways onto the ground. He struggled vainly to rise, pinned to the ground by the weight of his pack.

  Beckman clicked his mike. “Cougar, hold up a sec.” He turn
ed toward the scientist, watching him flounder helplessly under the weight of his load. “Pack getting heavy?”

  Dr McInness struggled to a sitting position, breathing heavily. His face was almost purple and his clothes were soaked with sweat. He retrieved his canteen and gulped down the last of his water, then he held his canteen upside down to be sure it was empty. “I need more water.”

  “Really? Let me call room service for some more. Oh, wait a minute, we’re in the middle of the jungle! There is no room service!” Beckman snapped. God damned civilians!

  “What do you expect in this heat?” the scientist demanded weakly.

  “I expect you to ration your water, like the rest of us!”

  Vamp gave the scientist a sympathetic look. “I’ll share my water with him, Major.”

  “Me too,” Xeno added reluctantly.

  Beckman suppressed his irritation, knowing he had little choice. He couldn’t let Dr McInness die of dehydration. “Just this once. We’ll purify some stream water tonight. Ration him until then.” He turned back to the exhausted scientist. “And you will lighten your pack! Throw out everything but your food.”

  Dr McInness shook his head, breathing heavily. “I need my equipment . . . for the ship.”

  “You’ll never make the ship with that weight.”

  “And we may learn nothing without it.”

  “You’ll learn nothing if you’re dead,” Markus said contemptuously.

  Beckman glanced thoughtfully at Markus. The CIA agent wore expensive light green hiking clothes, a broad brimmed hat and brown boots, all smart choices for the climate. So far, he seemed unaffected by the heat and humidity, a tribute to his good physical condition and the small size of his pack, which was filled with a minimum of food, water and ammunition. He travelled light, to conserve his strength and to allow him to move fast should the need arise. A small prismatic compass hung from his belt, and a plastic coated map was folded into his breast pocket for easy access, while his MP5 submachine gun was clipped to a chest harness to keep his hands free. Beckman had no doubt Markus could hike to the ship by himself, and might even have preferred to go solo.