by Isaac Hooke
“If it’s a trap, or a trick, we’ll simply detonate the payload,” the Chief transmitted.
“Exactly why I don’t like it,” Hijak transmitted. “But I digress.”
Fan had been excluded from most of the previous conversation, but the Chief cut him back in to say, “We’ve decided not to use your map data.”
The Chief was testing Fan of course, since we were relying on the data—in fact, Snakeoil’s computed course appeared as a series of interconnected lines on my HUD map at that very moment. But the Chief wanted to see how Fan would react. A sneaky tactic, maybe, though one I would’ve used myself.
Fan appeared unperturbed. “As you wish.” He bowed his head. “You are my rescuers.” With a glance at Skullcracker and Bender, he added: “And my captors.”
“Don’t you forget it,” the Chief told him, apparently satisfied with his response. “By the way, I’d advise you to shut down your Implant at your earliest convenience. Assuming you want to live, that is.”
Keeping our weapons at the ready, we proceeded at a steady lope. We followed the course Snakeoil had plotted and took the indicated branches when they came.
The map proved accurate thus far, though the corridors we chose were eerily devoid of life. We should have encountered at least one jumpsuited alien or Phant by now, to be consistent with the traffic we’d experienced earlier. But there was nothing.
“Does anyone else feel like these passages are a little too quiet?” Bender sent, excluding Fan.
“Where the hell are they?” Hijak said on the comm.
“Maybe all the nearby aliens were drawn to the coords of our previous attack,” Lui put out there.
“Yeah well,” Hijak sent, “they should have been able to muster for a second attack by now.”
“Don’t jinx us,” Manic transmitted. “If the aliens want to stay away, let them. Maybe they’re scared. They’ve seen how easily we can bypass their bulkheads.”
“They’re not scared,” Snakeoil said over the comm. “They probably already know we’re almost out of incendiary rounds.”
“I still think we should dump the SK,” Hijak interjected.
“And I still say he stays,” Lui sent.
“I’m with Lui,” Snakeoil said. “He did give us the map data, when all is said and done.”
“Yeah well,” Hijak responded, “the moment that map proves wrong, and it will, trust me, I say we toast him.”
“You’re all from the UC?” Fan interrupted, oblivious to the private battle over his fate that was taking place. “I visited New America, you know, when I was a youth. And Sino-Korea. Traveled all the way to Earth.”
“Keep quiet!” Bender sent.
“I actually want to hear this,” the Chief transmitted. The amusement was evident in his voice. “Go on, Fan. Tell us about your little visit to Earth.”
“Yes,” Fan sent, giving Bender a defiant look. “As a child of Tau Ceti system, I undertook the prerequisite journey to Earth, the mother world, in my late teens. What I found there proved vastly disappointing. The racism. The bigotry. Such a closed-minded people. And the citizens of the UC are not alone in this. The SKs of Earth are guilty, too. They pretend to esteem us but the moment we turn our backs they call us ‘spacers’ and treat us like feces. But perhaps my worst impression of Earth was the stinking masses of humanity . . . everywhere you go, an endless sea of people, billions and billions of them, choking the life from the planet! I had wondered why I saw so many greenhouse and livestock domes in orbit—it’s because the overpopulated planet is incapable of supporting food production anymore!”
“Wait, that’s not entirely true,” Lui transmitted. “We have whole parcels of land outside the cities set aside for hydroponic farm towers and whatnot. I’m sure you’ve seen the buildings, the ones that look like huge steel spruce trees. Plus a lot of crop growth is done underneath the ocean these days, with sunlight piped in via optics.”
“Well, I am telling you only what I saw. You say parcels of land outside the cities are set aside for farms? I did not see them. Nor these steel trees you mentioned. Instead, outside the cities, all I saw was suburbia, suburbia, and more suburbia. And when the city planners were not expanding outward, they were building upward! Skyscrapers like nothing I had ever witnessed devoured the sky. Multiple levels of roadways. Vehicles, people, and robots everywhere. On the sidewalk. Above the sidewalk. On the roads. Pure insanity. Too many people. Way too many. The governments of Earth would do well to trim the population.
“Look at the colonies. Most of them cap out at one million people. That’s the perfect number for a planet. Not too many, not too few. Enough room for genetic diversity. Enough room to share the world with other compatible life. Before the invasion, we used to have herds of buffalo roaming the grass steppes of Tau Ceti II-b. A million, actually. Just as there were a million songbirds. A million deer. A million horses. Do you see where I’m going with this? Too many of any one animal species ruins a planet. But by limiting the numbers of each one, a balance is found, an accord with nature. And the world takes care of itself. That is a healthy planet. That is a healthy ecosystem.
“Think about it: If Earth implemented population control, not only would nature operate more smoothly, but so would the man-made constructs of government and business. Bureaucracy would be reduced. Food and wealth equally shared, rather than hoarded among the rich countries. Everyone would have access to spacefaring technology. Everyone would have their own robot, and free food for life. This is the reality of the grand experiment known as the colonies, and it could be the reality of Earth as well.”
“I’m all for the colonies,” Lui said over the comm as he walked. “And I have a lot of respect for people who live out in space. But what exactly are you trying to say? That we should round up the billions of people on Earth and launch them to the colonies? Sorry dude, there aren’t enough terraformed worlds to hold them all if we’re going to limit the populations to a million.”
“The simplest solution would be to institute some sort of yearly lottery to reduce the number of people,” Fan transmitted.
“A slaughterhouse lottery, you mean,” Manic sent.
“That is one way, but not one I would advocate. Sterilize anyone born into the society of Earth. Then, only those who win the lottery are allowed to forgo the reproductive suppressants. Take away the rejuvenation treatments as well, and in six or seven decades you could have the population of Earth down to twenty percent of what it is now.”
“That sounds suspiciously like what the invaders want.” I glanced at Chief Bourbonjack.
The Chief raised an eyebrow behind his faceplate. “All right, I’ve heard enough. Quiet on the comm line please.”
I could tell from the disgusted faces that I wasn’t the only one disturbed by Fan’s views.
“Chief, are we really sure this guy’s not a host?” Manic sent on the private line. “He’s got some weird-ass ideas.”
“He is a Sino-Korean,” Bender transmitted on the same line. “Who knows what brainwashing bull-crap his government has fed his mind.”
“Dump him?” Hijak asked the Chief.
Lui’s torso bobbed slightly left and right—he was shaking his head inside the helmet. He opened his mouth but before he could speak the Chief answered.
“Fan stays, for now,” the Chief sent. “Now as I said, quiet on the comm line please.”
We continued down the corridor, following Snakeoil’s plotted trajectory. The corridors continued to check out, matching Fan’s blueprints perfectly.
Still, it seemed odd that we hadn’t encountered a soul since meeting the SK.
I was trailing the group, acting as drag man, when my sixth sense fired: I felt certain someone was following us.
I glanced over my shoulder, shining my headlamp back the way we had come, but I perceived only the dark passage with its undulating
bulkheads.
Though he was ahead of me, the Chief noticed my backward glance, probably because of the shifting light from my headlamp. He turned toward me. “What is it, Rage?”
“Dunno,” I said.
“Did you hear something?”
“Not exactly.” I shifted my grip on the rifle. “It’s just . . . I can’t shake the feeling that something is following us.”
The Chief raised a hand, halting the group. “Never ignore your instincts. Check it out. Lui, go with Rage.”
The two of us retreated cautiously down the passageway, our headlamps lighting the way in the dark.
And then I saw it.
Some kind of black slime oozed from the ceiling onto the floor.
“I don’t remember this condensation being here on the way,” Lui sent.
“That’s because it wasn’t.” I knelt. There was no way I was going to touch the substance, not when I knew what contact with alien matter like that found in Phants could do to a man. I ran a quick scan with my HUD instead. It seemed to be some form of bio-matter. “That’s not condensation. Chief, you getting this on my vid feed?”
“I am,” the Chief answered. “The two of you get back here. Now.”
We retreated slowly at first, keeping our aim pointed steadily into the murk. As soon as the slime was out of sight, we turned around and jogged toward the others.
Before we rejoined them a thin tentacle thrust from the darkness behind us.
It wrapped around Lui’s neck assembly, hauling him backward.
“Lui!” I opened fire with my rifle, severing the tentacle.
A bulbous shape darted forward, taking up half the corridor.
I continued shooting. Lying on the gangway, Lui fired at the creature with me.
The thing slowed and finally dropped to the deck only a short distance from Lui’s boots. Its tentacles flopped around the deflating bulb that was its main mass. Black slime seeped from the bullet holes, further shrinking it.
Lui got up and together we stared at the thing, not quite sure what to make of it.
The rest of the squad hurried to join us.
“What the hell . . .” the Chief sent. “You two all right?”
“Fine, Chief,” Lui replied.
“Never better,” I said.
The Chief turned toward Fan. “Have you seen one of these before?”
The SK shook his head.
“The EM emitters didn’t protect us from it,” Lui said.
“No they did not,” the Chief agreed. “Like I said earlier, the ruse is up.”
While the rest of us kept our guns trained down the fore and aft of the corridor, Snakeoil examined the carcass. “Looks like a jellyfish of some kind.”
Lui prodded the gooey remains with his rifle. “An air-based jellyfish?”
“The environment here is similar to the upper atmosphere of a gas giant,” Snakeoil said over the comm. “Scientists have hypothesized that life-forms like this might exist in such an atmosphere, though until today we’ve never actually encountered any.”
“But the gravity of this place is all wrong for a gas giant,” Lui sent.
“Not necessarily,” Snakeoil transmitted. “You’re forgetting other influencing factors, such as the gale-force winds found in a gas giant’s upper atmosphere. Such winds might counter the high gravity, similar to the buoyancy effect of water.”
“Gale-force winds would rip this thing apart,” Lui sent. “Plus, where’s the wind?” He held up a gloved finger as if testing for a breeze.
“Let’s move on, people,” the Chief said.
We hoisted the payload—I was one of those assigned to portage duty this time around—and continued forward. Snakeoil led the way, followed by us four porters, and three more bringing up the rear with Fan.
We all watched the darkness keenly. It wouldn’t be fun to endure a repeat of what had just happened, with some random tentacle suddenly spiriting one of us away.
Snakeoil paused up ahead. He was gazing toward the rightmost bulkhead. His aReal interpreted what he saw and transmitted updates to my HUD: a cavernous side compartment appeared on my map, something that wasn’t present in the previous data.
“New map data.” The Chief glanced accusingly at the SK. “Fan, have you been hiding this from us?”
Fan shook his head adamantly. “No. My helmet must been facing away when I passed this way. But I thought you weren’t using my data map anyway?”
“Let’s dump him!” Hijak urged over the squad comm.
“Quiet,” the Chief replied.
“Guys, you better come see this.” Snakeoil stepped into the side passage.
We approached the entrance and set down the payload, and then joined Snakeoil in the corridor. Bender prodded Fan forward behind me.
The passage opened into a vast cavern. We saw hundreds of tall, equally spaced plates that seemed to be made of black resin. Thousands of decagonal cells were carved into each plate. Glowing Phants in gaseous form floated between the cells, the bolts of electricity from their bodies providing much of the ambient light.
Jellyfish-like entities, similar to the one we’d just gunned down, also moved between plates; the bulbous masses of their bodies rhythmically expanded and contracted, propelling them forward.
Manic and the others shoved their way past, lining up along the inner wall as they took in the strange sight.
“Looks like a beehive,” Manic sent.
One of the cells collapsed as I watched, and I saw a blue Phant emerge. It glowed brighter than any Phant I had seen before.
“Some kind of nursery?” Lui transmitted.
“That, or a mess hall,” Snakeoil said over the comm.
“Maybe we should plant the nuke,” Bender sent. “Might not get an opportunity this good again.”
“No,” Chief Bourbonjack said over the comm. “We stick to the plan. We get as close to the Observer Mind as possible, then we plant the nuke.”
I glanced at my HUD map. The Observer Mind was still more than a day’s march away.
Bender unhooked a grenade from his belt. “Still, might be worth it to cause a little damage while we’re here.”
“You remember what I told you earlier about drawing undue attention to ourselves?” the Chief told him.
“Uh, Chief?” Lui sent. “It’s a little too late for that now.”
Some of the closer jellyfish had turned around and were hurrying toward us. The bulbs of their bodies pumped furiously, tentacles dragging along behind them. They were joined by blue and purple Phants.
“Grenades and rockets, people!” the Chief yelled over the comm. “Give ’em hell!”
We hurled grenades and fired our Gustavs into the cavern. Resinous cells burst and jellyfish exploded, spraying the inner bulkheads with black liquid and writhing tentacles.
“Good enough!” the Chief sent. “Tactical retrograde, men!”
We retreated to the payload; four of us scooped it up and together we proceeded from the area at a jog.
Skullcracker and Snakeoil brought up the rear. Behind them, tentacles flailed through the opening and into the corridor. Our drag men opened fire with their heavy guns, covering our retreat.
“Can I have a gun?” Fan asked.
“No!” the Chief returned.
We jogged down the corridor as fast as we could, those jellyfish harrying us the entire way. Skullcracker and Snakeoil unleashed sporadic gunfire all the while, doing their best to keep the enemy at bay.
Purple Phants began to sweep past the jellyfish. We all knew how well bullets worked against them.
The nine of us abruptly piled into a wide compartment. A series of ribbed protrusions ran along the deck and bulkhead; between those ribs, dark passages led off to other portions of the ship. It seemed a hub of sorts.
In the center of the room, at the confluence of the ridges, a raised dais jutted from the deck, topped by a flat, metallic disc.
“Another compartment that doesn’t match the map,” Hijak sent, excluding Fan.
Indeed. According to my map, the corridor should have continued onward without interruption. As I watched, the HUD blueprint updated, replacing the previous passage with a pinwheel-like cavern that matched what I was now looking at.
“Perfect place for an ambush,” Lui sent, also excluding Fan.
We all turned to regard Fan, who was giving us a sheepish grin from where he stood beside Bender. He realized very well that the map data was different.
The sound of gunfire from Skullcracker and Snakeoil reminded us of our predicament.
“Cross!” the Chief said over the comm.
Tentacles slammed into the chamber behind us, searching, seeking, but Skullcracker and Snakeoil severed them with their heavy guns.
Hijak, Manic, Lui, and I struggled to lift the payload over the ribs in the floor. I was about to suggest a coordinated leap with jumpjets when the Chief spoke.
“Taking too long,” the Chief transmitted. “Porters, use your jetpacks!”
“Wait Chief, we’ve got company,” Manic sent.
The vaporous forms of blue and purple Phants crowded the other entrances to the chamber. They slowly floated inside, forming an ever-tightening noose.
“On me, Snakeoil!” the Chief transmitted, voice sounding grim.
Snakeoil joined him at the command console. We porters started to lower the payload.
“Keep moving!” the Chief sent us.
“Where?” Lui returned.
“Away from the Phants!”
And so we did, letting the Phants herd us toward the center of the chamber—the only place we could go. While we were doing this, the Chief and Snakeoil inserted their physical keys and entered their respective halves of the armament code into the device.
The Chief turned toward the Phants when it was done. “Back off!” He said over the external speakers of his helmet, keeping his gloved hand over the command console. “Back off or I blow the thing!”
