by Chris Ward
‘Sorry, Harlan, but I can hardly trust Paul to protect her, can I?’
Paul scowled, but Beth laughed. ‘Lucky me,’ she said.
‘I will return to the ship to ensure its systems are undamaged,’ Harlan5 said. ‘I will wait for you there. If you get into trouble, send a transmission. I can’t guarantee I’ll be capable of aiding you, but I can at least offer you some sympathy.’
‘Are you trying to be funny again?’ Paul said.
Harlan5 shrugged. ‘My programming doesn’t understand the concept of humor, Little Buck.’ Beth caught a flicker of his eye lights that suggested otherwise.
Where the moss had covered the forest, much of it still remained, as though the Evattlans struggled to differentiate what they could and couldn’t eat. Where the forest gave way to open rocky plains the moss had been cleared, leaving an area a couple of miles across where the three circular spacecraft had landed.
‘Looks like they’re waiting for something,’ Paul said. ‘A good chance to rush them, get on board?’
Beth rolled her eyes. ‘Probably not.’
‘We can’t make a difference to the war by hiding in the bushes like a group of cowards,’ Paul said. ‘We have to do something.’
He started to stand, but Davar lifted a hand. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking.’
‘How nice for you. Thinking will get us killed.’
‘So far it’s kept us alive.’
‘Be quiet, you two. Can’t you hear that?’
‘What?’
Beth glanced back over her shoulder. ‘They’re coming back.’
The ground beneath them had begun to vibrate. Soon, the sound of hundreds of marching feet had grown to a deafening roar.
Paul pulled his blaster, cocking it at his shoulder. ‘The bugs.’
‘No, wait!’
Davar snatched for it, but Paul no longer had Harlan5 around to keep him in check. He shoved Davar aside, peering down the barrel at the forest behind them.
‘You idiot, get that out of sight.’
‘They’re not feeding now,’ Paul said. ‘They’re heading for those ships. They might be coming for a fight.’
Arguing with Paul was pointless. Beth stepped up beside him and while he was looking at Davar, reached up and twisted the blaster out of his hands. He snatched for it, but Beth glared at him.
‘You can get yourself killed if you like, but I’d rather stay alive.’
Paul gave a reluctant nod. Beth handed back the blaster just as a sound came from the gloom behind. The first Evattlans appeared, running hard. This time there were two clear sizes. The larger ones they’d seen before guided thousands of smaller ones, no larger than humans, their bodies fresh and glistening as though their armor was yet to harden.
‘I thought they were going to unload their food pouches,’ Paul said. ‘They’re still loaded.’
He was right, Beth saw, as the first ran past them into the clearing, out across a sheet of netting laid out around the nearest ship. It squatted down, joined quickly by dozens of others, their bodies shaking, jerking the large food pouches back and forth.
The air filled with a ripping sound. Beth put a hand over her mouth as the pouch on the one nearest to her split open, disgorging a dozen black eggs the size of bounders. They bounced to the ground, hitting hard, making the ground shake even more.
‘Oh, wow. That’s their life cycle, I guess,’ Davar said. ‘Look.’
The Evattlan worker which had split open had fallen to its knees, its pincers resting on the ground. A group of nearby adolescents reached it, dragging its body back beneath the trees. There, they devoured it, picking it apart piece by piece, leaving the cluster of massive eggs lying on the netting.
‘So they’re giving up their eggs,’ Davar said. ‘My guess, based on what Harlan was saying, is this is a surplus. They’re giving away some to the Shadowmen but keeping the rest. Why simply give them away? These aren’t complex creatures. They’re basically giant ants. What are they getting in return?’
As the field of eggs grew, their dying carriers dragged away to supplement the adolescents’ feast, the answer came in a series of whirring sounds from the huge spacecraft. Vents slid open and great cascading jets of yellow liquid arched out, hitting the ground and eating into the soft surface, making brief rivers down into the tunnels underground.
Beth was staring up at the ship, watching the great rainbow-like arches slam through trees and moss alike when beside her Paul screamed, ‘Watch out!’
The cascade hit the ground mere steps from where she stood, a pungent, sticky liquid eating through the ground, creating a sudden sinkhole which it poured inside. Paul was screaming, and she heard his blaster go off, but Beth found herself transfixed by an adolescent Evattlan as it scampered forward, scooping up the thick liquid with the desperation of something close to starvation.
It was a food, perhaps even a drug of some kind, offered in exchange for a surplus of fertilized eggs which could be taken away and bioengineered into foot soldiers to fight in a distant war.
‘Beth! Look out!’
She felt rather than saw the other adolescent as it struck her from behind, knocking them both forward. She twisted, catching a brief glimpse of Paul and Davar, their faces horror-struck, then she slid on a river of the sticky yellow liquid, dragged through new tunnels and old, as it cascaded down into the lair of the Evattlan horde.
23
Raylan
‘Kyle. Status?’
The crackling of his intercom reminded Raylan he needed to get it fixed. When it came, Kyle Jansen’s voice sounded nervous. ‘Nothing yet, lord, but we’re getting close.’
‘Define how you can come to that conclusion?’
‘Because we’ve reduced the remaining area to be scanned to just one-tenth of Vattla’s habitable surface. We’re closing in.’
‘A shame you didn’t target that remaining tenth first.’
Kyle didn’t answer. Raylan enjoyed the awkwardness for a moment then snapped off his intercom before Kyle could reply.
Raylan growled under his breath. Kyle was an idiot, but he’d employed no one better. It was preferable to keep him alive rather than go through the hassle of training someone to take his place. At least the negotiations with Phevius System had gone well. With an agreement now officially in place, Phevius System was assembling a space fleet to enter the smaller Event System to assume command. No doubt there would be resistance, but Phevius System had devised a plan better than Raylan could have devised himself. Far richer than most systems due to their abundance of fire planets, Phevius System’s initial invasion fleet would be made up of paid mercenaries and bonded warlords.
Thrown first into Event System, they would act as cannon fodder, with the main Phevian space navy coming after to mop up the leftovers of Event System’s fleet.
Raylan rubbed his hands together. With Trill, Phevius, and Event on side, they would be halfway there. Areola and Quaxar would put up a fight, but they would be outnumbered and outmatched. Frail was a free-for-all and the best Cask could do would be to cut off access until they were starved out.
Easy.
Within a couple of Earth-years he would sit proudly upon a throne as emperor of all the Estron Quadrant, drowning in his own wealth, swooned over by beauties from all over the galaxy. He would be a just and fair ruler…unless he was crossed, in which case his enemies would pay the price with long and terrible suffering.
‘You,’ he snapped at a nearby Shadowman technician. ‘Has the exchange been completed yet?’
‘It is underway, lord,’ came the reply, a sinister whisper which sent shivers down Raylan’s catlike back. The Shadowmen, too thin and too tall, would be one of the first races he had exterminated or outlawed once he had power. ‘In nine locations across the northern hemisphere, we are nearly complete. The next batch will be airborne before the long night begins.’
‘Good work, sir,’ Raylan said.
He left the bridge, heading for a control
room he had assigned to his search for Lianetta Jansen’s ship. Kyle’s reconnaissance teams were blinkered by the layer of moss which covered everywhere the Evattan nests were found. Thick and impenetrable, it was a perfect place for Lianetta to hide, but as the creatures emerged to feast, their cover would slowly dissolve until the scanners hunting for electronic systems could easily pick up the resting ship.
It would be over soon.
A dozen monitor screens replayed all the interesting sites located so far, but other than a group of bandits hiding out in the northern hemisphere darkness who had been fired on and destroyed, all sites of interest had proven to be crashed ships or abandoned scientific research centers.
No sign yet, but it would come.
He brought up details of the ongoing war in Trill System, transmitted through a private link by the Helix. As usual it came through scrambled and difficult to translate, but it seemed Feint was now a ruin, its defenders obliterated, all trace of its former glory gone, chewed up and consumed by the Helix which had created several million new Bareleon purebloods and ships to carry them.
Much to Raylan’s frustration, this new army was moving on Cable, where pockets of resistance still held out while the inhabitants continued to flee. Another Bareleon fleet had moved on the fire planet of Abalon 3, which had no standing space navy bar his own defensive fleet. He had warned his commanders not to fire on the Bareleons for fear of angering the Helix, even though it was violating the terms of their agreement.
With a slow shake of his head, he let out a low growl. While a couple of million Bareleon mercenaries would prove useful in the takeovers of Event and Areola, the Helix had outstayed its welcome.
When his deep-space scouts had discovered its scrambled transmissions coming from an empty star system far across the galaxy, he had jumped on the opportunity to form an alliance. He hadn’t, however, given much thought to what might happen if it broke their agreement.
Now, he realized, a war might need to be fought on two fronts, if he were to reinforce and consolidate his own grip on power.
‘Some good news,’ he muttered. ‘Give me some good news.’ As if on cue, the transmitter on his belt buzzed. ‘Yes, Kyle, what is it? I know what time of day it is on fifteen planets, so tell me something I don’t know before I have your tongue cut out.’
The voice crackling out of the transmitter sounded almost smug. ‘We’ve found them, lord. We’ve found Lianetta’s ship.’
24
Harlan5
The Matilda sat where they had left it. No longer in a pleasant grove of trees, however, but beneath a mound of collapsed moss root tendrils, its upper surface covered with clippings and cuttings left over by the wave of adolescents that had followed in the workers’ wake. Harlan5, after first checking that the horde had moved on, cleared away the root tendrils from the entrance hatch, then activated the door control with his unique code and headed inside.
The humans would get into trouble soon; it was inevitable. While his programming would allow him to delete his recently created affection for them in favor of his loyalty to the captain, the main transmitters had picked up no distress transmissions from either her nor Caladan. They could be anywhere across the galaxy, and there was little Harlan5 could do other than wait. Trying to find them reconfigured what his programming told him old humanity regarded as a wild goose chase, because they could be anywhere by now across a thousand occupied systems. It was far better to let them come to him.
In the meantime, though, the humanity-simulators he enjoyed engaging wanted to keep an eye on his new friends.
Unlike the captain, who had a habit of getting out of tight situations developed by plenty of experience of getting into them, Beth, Paul, and Davar were headstrong and brave but mostly clueless. What they thought they knew about their homeworld gave them no tools for survival somewhere alien like Vattla. It was entirely likely they would fall foul of either the Evattlans or the Shadowmen before the long day was out.
Harlan5 powered up the ship’s auxiliary systems, checking the fuel levels, the damage to the hull and the ongoing bot-repairs, scanned for transmissions and checked the cannons were fully loaded. While he could only fly the ship solo in an intermediary capacity, he had a few tricks up his proverbial robot sleeve, one or two he’d even neglected to tell the captain over the years.
His programming told him humans liked to keep each other guessing.
The Matilda was ninety-percent operational, about as good as she ever was. She could easily outrun the three cumbersome Shadowman transports sitting in the clearing a couple of miles to the north, but the ships waiting in orbit were a different proposition. The Matilda had recharged its electrical systems and had enough fuel for a short stasis-ultraspace hop, but whether it could get past Raylan Climlee’s fighters was another matter.
He checked for transmissions from the ground. Nothing. Next, he scanned for approaching ships, and found a group of three closing in.
The ship’s systems took a scan, and he searched his own database compiled along with the ship’s computer to get a more complete image of what was approaching.
A seek-and-destroy team. One larger M4 Surface Scanner, with two supporting Interplanetary Fighters. The IFs were newer models, neither as fast nor as well-armed as the Matilda, but two on one changed the odds.
They would be overhead within ten minutes. They were already within missile range but Harlan5 suspected Raylan wanted the ship’s crew taken alive. He probably thought the captain and Caladan were piloting the ship and had designs on taking them prisoner, something which worked to Harlan5’s advantage.
Using an encrypted signal, he sent a transmission to Beth, Paul, and Davar. None answered, but the delivery codes on one of the three signals came back incomplete, as though it’d experienced interference.
Harlan checked his databases. There was only one answer.
One of them had gone underground.
His programming understood the pointlessness of being destroyed with the Matilda when the seek-and-destroy team finally came knocking. Loaded up with what he thought might need, he headed down through the ship and out through the lower hatch.
As he stepped down onto rock, he turned and gave the Matilda a pat on its metallic side. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he whispered. ‘My programming hopes you’ll still be here.’
25
Davar
‘She’s gone!’ Paul screamed, his face contorted with anger.
Davar felt like doing the same. Aware of the danger they were in, however, he pulled Paul down behind a rock and slapped a hand over his mouth. ‘Quiet!’
Paul tried to push Davar’s hand away, but as always, he underestimated Davar’s quiet strength. There was plenty of downtime during lab work for a few pull-ups, Davar had reminded him in the past, and despite being thinner, Kalistini had a wirier muscular system to humans.
‘What are you doing?’ Paul gasped before Davar finally let him go.
‘Keep your voice down. You’ll get us both killed.’
‘But those monsters took her.’
‘They didn’t take her. She fell.’
‘We have to get her out.’
‘How?’
‘We’ll climb down there and find her. If those monsters get in our way, we’ll cut them down, one by one.’
Paul started to stand but Davar slapped him hard across the face. ‘Listen to me. Haven’t you been watching anything? Those monsters aren’t our enemy. They haven’t touched us. If we don’t disturb them, we could walk right through the middle of that horde as though we were invisible.’
‘You go first and if you make it, I’ll follow,’ Paul snapped. ‘Otherwise, I’ll wait here with my blaster to take out the scum who take you out.’
‘What I’m trying to get through your reinforced skull is the enemy is over there in those ships. Those are the assholes who enslaved Trill System. Beth’s gone down that tunnel and we need to get her out, and it’ll be easier if those bugs don’t feel threate
ned. In fact, it might be safer if there’s none down there at all, don’t you think?’
‘A diversion.’
Davar grinned. ‘Now we’re on the same wavelength. How?’
Paul punched a fist into the ground. ‘We get on board one of those ships and bone them from the inside out.’
‘Um, right—’
Paul leaped to his feet. He twirled his blaster, then dropped to one knee and aimed through the sight.
‘Wait!’
‘No, you wait. Gate’s opening. Look.’
Davar followed Paul’s gaze across the clearing. Below the nearest ship, a hatch had dropped down. As it struck the ground, tall, spindly creatures came running out.
‘Oh man, they make you shiver, don’t they? Can see why they call them Shadowmen. Sure I had a picture book with these assholes in it as a kid. Used to scare me to sleep.’
‘Three Little Pigs would have scared you.’
‘What’s a pig?’
Davar sighed. ‘Doesn’t matter. Let’s see if we can rile up those bugs to turn on their masters.’
‘What’s your plan?’
‘We take out a few of those eggs. Probably protective of their young, aren’t they? Even the ones they’re giving away.’
‘I’ll go,’ Paul said. ‘See if I can blast those spindle-dicks’ faces full of yolk.’
‘Paul, wait!’
Davar tried to grab Paul’s arm but reached for it too late. Paul had made it to his feet and sprinted across the open space toward the nearest ship.
‘Get back, you hothead fool!’ Davar hissed, but Paul could no longer hear him. Blaster in hand, he dodged between eggs that stood to his chest, heading for the open hatch.
He almost made it. The frenzied removal of the dead workers by the adolescents had disguised that some were still alive out there. One rose up in front of Paul, towering above him. Paul lifted his blaster, firing up into the headspace below the pincers. The creature squealed, a sound that made the hairs stand up on Davar’s neck. Pincers slashed downwards. Paul dived to the side, disappearing. Serrated blades hacked through the air where Paul had been a moment before, cutting off two of its own eggs, spraying luminous green gunk everywhere. Then, with a howling death cry, the Evattlan slumped forward.
