by Paul Kidd
Animals began running from the west, passing the ship as she drove onward toward the disaster zone. Spike-tailed kangaroos; double-headed emus; and great, long-legged echidnas all ran fast with panic in their eyes.
Soon the night goggles showed the hot, withered burn zone ahead. Shaani lowered the mainsails. The ship crept forward on topsails and auxiliary motors, turning to parallel the line of smoldering, blackened grass.
The stench was choking. Embers glowed where grass and trees still burned. Rustle and Wig-wig came to the railings, craning to see the disaster zone in the eerie darkness. There was no sound except the hiss and sizzle of the fires. Rolling slowly through the smoke, the ship felt her way forward along a wasteland of ash and charcoal.
The night-vision goggles showed large shapes up ahead. It had to be the Plodders. The ship came to a halt, and Shaani cupped her hands to bellow out into the dark. “Hallo? Anybody? This is the Sand Shark here.”
There was no answer. Xoota came up from the control cabin and armored herself, making sure her boots were on tight. Shaani followed suit. The quoll called back to Rustle, who was extremely leery of the glowing coals.
“Rustle, you stay on board with sand buckets and the water pump. Keep an eye out for any sparks. Wig-wig, you keep in the rigging.” The bugs would wither in any heat or flame. The little creatures were just too vulnerable. “We’ll go check this out.”
Shaani, loaded up with welding gloves, first-aid kit, and water, slid down into the hold, waved a somewhat self-conscious hello to Benek, who sat glaring at her in the gloom, and tromped down the back ramp and out onto the grass. She patted Budgie as she passed. “Mind the ship. There’s a good boy.”
The budgerigar whistled three bars of Mozart at her then went back to sleep.
Xoota vaulted over the side of the ship, landing lightly on her booted feet. Shaani lifted up her penlight and flashed it into the dark. Massive, black shapes were out there somewhere. The two women walked forward into the dark.
Shaani called out and flashed her light. “Hallo? Anybody?”
The giant, mutant wombats were hunkered down in the middle of the smoking grass. There was a faint shimmer of force fields around them as the immense, slow creatures protected themselves from the flames. They were all curled up, heads tucked in beneath them and looking quite featureless. Whether the wombats generated their own force field or the Plodders had some sort of omega tech, Shaani wasn’t sure, but it had protected the beasts.
Shaani ran from one to another, calling up to the platforms mounted on the animals high above her. There were no answers. Here and there, artifacts were burning in the grass. Broken spears, mats, and weavings …
… A body.
It was lying in the smoldering grass, its skin scorched black. Shaani made a noise of dismay and turned the body over. It was one of the Plodder tribesmen, a warrior. And his head had been blown clean off.
The rat’s stomach jerked. She forced herself to be a scientist; she was no use unless she could be dispassionate, unless she could view the evidence with a clear, unbiased mind. She forced herself to kneel down and examine the wound, looking at it underneath her light.
The tissue was seared and charred, cauterized. It was clearly the result of an energy weapon, perhaps a pistol much like the one Xoota was carrying.
“Shaani, over here.”
The rat stood. She wiped her eyes and stumbled over to where Xoota held aloft a bio light.
One of the huge wombats lay steaming on the ground. Its fur had burned off. The cracked skin oozed red in horrible, wet fissures. At first it seemed the creature was hunched in and covering itself like the others. A closer view showed the animal had holes blasted through its flesh. Much of its head was missing. It was clearly stone dead.
Grim and revolted, Xoota nodded at the wounds. “What the hell could kill one of these things?”
“Energy weapons.” The lab rat’s voice sounded hoarse. “Big ones.”
There was no sign of the tribesmen. The platforms atop the Plodders were empty. No one screamed or cried for help. There was only one dead body lying in the ash. Xoota looked around in frustration then ran toward a tall ridge of rock. She stood up and scanned the area carefully with the night goggles. “Hey, there’s something out there. Some four hundred meters away … it’s long and furry and not moving very well.” Xoota leaped instantly from the rock. “Shaani, Wig-wig, this way.”
The quoll raced to the ship and called for Budgie. She mounted the bird bareback, reaching down to swing Shaani up behind her. The budgerigar raced full pelt across the unburned grass, waving his little wings in anxiety at the nearby smoke and fires. Swarming down from the Sand Shark’s rigging, Wig-wig whirred and fluttered in the night, following the riders in a colossal, untidy swarm.
Hundreds of meters away, half hidden in a fold in the ground, something was thrashing and crying in pain. Shaani and Xoota drew Budgie to a halt and dismounted in the long, unscorched grass nearby. Suddenly aware of the sheer size of the poor thing thrashing in the little dell, they approached cautiously through the weeds.
There, lying on the ground, was one of the winged, furry serpents that had attacked the Sand Shark only a few days before. It lifted its maned, feline head, clashing its mandibles. Perfectly formed hands on the ends of its wings gripped and tore at the soil. It had two smoking wounds burned into its side. The beast rolled its head, caught sight of Shaani’s glimmering white fur, and instantly gave a squeal of fright.
“No kill Yexil. Good Yexil. Nice Yexil. No kill him. No.”
Xoota stared at the creature in alarm. “Sweet Enola Gay, it talks.”
“Yexil talks.” The monster thrashed its furry body and groaned, clearly in agony. “Help. Help poor Yexil.”
Shaani began sliding down into the dell. “Shh, I’ll help you.”
Xoota drew her pistol in fright. “Shaani, these are the things that almost blew us apart.”
“Well, now it needs help.” The rat was already at the monster’s side. “Science must be compassionate, or else it loses its soul. If we can’t overlook a simple misunderstanding or two, then we are only just monsters.” She opened up her first-aid kit and stroked the patient softly on his furry side. “There, there, old chap. Soon fix you up. What happened, eh?”
“Shiny men. Shiny men shoot poor Yexil.”
She carefully cleaned the two worst wounds. They were from energy gun blasts; a smaller creature would have been blown clear in two. Wig-wig came to consult with Shaani. The two of them began working on healing Yexil while Xoota nervously tried to provide fire support from above. Shaani propped her computer reader onto the rocks beside her, letting it run its articles as she worked.
“Computer, show me first aid and emergency medical procedures.”
“Basic or advanced?”
“One after the other, if you please.”
Shaani worked by the light of an ordinary light bulb tucked behind her pink ear. She carefully tended to Yexil while beside her, the computer droned on about defibrillation kits and inflatable splints.
“So what happened to you, eh? How did this happen, you poor thing?”
Yexil wailed. “Yexil hungry. Fly to Plodder men with bag of fruit to trade. Plodder men make fabric. Yummy yummy fabric. Yexil make good trade with Plodder men.
“Big beetle come from sky. Out come shiny men. Four, five … many. Shoot Plodder. Shoot poor Yexil. Take Plodder men away.”
Shaani carefully administered drugs from her ancient medical kit. “Took them away?”
“Poor Plodder men went into shiny beetle. Shiny beetle flew away.”
Xoota was listening alertly. “Where? Where did it fly?”
Yexil flopped its head to point to the northeast. “There. Over hook-head mountain.”
Wig-wig was managing to do good work healing the creature. The drugs seemed to be helping.
Shaani walked over to his head to give Yexil a drink of water from her flask. “So these shiny men, they just atta
cked without warning? Did the shiny men say anything?”
Yexil drank gratefully, then flopped his head down to rest. “Shiny men say ‘All mutant must be kill.’ ‘Mutant not be pure …’ ”
Xoota was not amused. Her antennae fell flat. “Oh, kack.”
It was Benek’s damned computer monster.
They gave Yexil liter after liter of water to drink. The poor thing was parched. As they helped him drink, Shaani conferred urgently with Xoota.
“The robot, it must have had a communicator link to the starport. Maybe it jumped to a new host.” Shaani looked appalled. “Dear Darwin, it has the armory. And it has ships.”
Xoota blinked. “There’s nothing out here to conquer.”
“There are these poor tribes. And how long do you think it would take it to find Watering Hole, the desert villages, everything worthwhile?”
Yexil rolled over onto his feet. He was no longer ebbing and fading. He drank yet more water. As an experiment, Shaani pulled out a sheet she had taken from the ancient prison. The Yexil seized it and ate it with gusto. It seemed to greatly aid in his recovery.
“All right Yexil, old chap. Are you feeling any better? Can you fly?”
The animal looked grateful. He flexed his wings. “Fly a little. Not feel so bad now.”
“Well, can you make it back to your home?”
Yexil nodded. “Yexil can go home now.” The huge monster reached down and licked Shaani’s face with an immense, pink tongue. “Yexil sorry he try to steal cloth from big butterfly on wheels. People who live on butterfly-wheely are friends for Yexil now.”
Yexil stayed nose to nose with Shaani. He was apparently expecting something. Shaani made a little ah of understanding. She licked Yexil’s face in return.
Yexil seemed pleased. “Yexil and wheely-butterfly people be friend.” He suddenly beat his wings. “Now Yexil go home.” The creature beat his way up into the air. Moving slowly and painfully, he flapped off toward a distant set of hills.
Shaani waved until he had disappeared from sight. The rat had a strip of Yexil lick across her front.
Xoota looked at her with droll eyes. “You licked him?”
“Seemed to be the thing to do.” The rat settled her hat upon her head. “Actually, he tasted remarkably like chicken.”
They led Wig-wig and Budgie away from the little dell, heading back to the ship. Xoota was angered by Benek, computers, and electronics in general. “Where do we go now?”
“Go?” Shaani was surprised. “Well, we have to find the starport. We have to see what must be done.”
“I thought you might say that.” Xoota scrubbed at her eyes. “Right. We’ll move in the dark. I want the ship hidden under cover by daybreak. Anything you can do to mask our heat signature, do it.”
“Righty-o. Science shall prevail.”
Xoota shook her head. “Yeah, well, they have a lot more of it on tap than we do.”
“Ah, but they don’t have a lab rat.” Shaani briskly led the way back to the Sand Shark. “All right. Chop-chop. Science never sleeps.”
Xoota took a last look at the groaning shapes of the Plodders in the dark then turned Budgie back toward the ship. Ahead of her in the darkness, Shaani was happily reading up on her first aid.
“Ooh, defibrillation. That sounds fun.”
Xoota, Shaani, Wig-wig, and Rustle sheltered behind a rocky crest atop a steep, sharp hill. Below them, a carpet of gray-green treetops led down a long valley toward a plain of sandstone rock covered with ancient omega buildings. They spread out over an area greater than all the villages of the desert put together. There were vast sheds—complex buildings with thousands of glass windows. And there, beside the main building, were the ships: a row of tall, pointed darts, gleaming in scarlet, blue, and gold.
Midday heat made the rocks shimmer. Parched grass nodded. Here and there, little, beige butterflies flitted among the wilting flowers. Xoota had a locust in her mouth, munching on it thoughtfully as she peered through her binoculars. She kept the lenses carefully shaded behind a fan of grass.
“There, what do you make of that?” she said, passing the binoculars to Shaani.
A sonic fence ran around the rim of the plain. Squat, silver blobs moved along the fence lines. Security robots? The defenses looked pretty heavy.
Several places in the starport were covered in rubble. An aircraft seemed to have crashed into the main building long before, causing damaged that had been overgrown with grass and weeds. Elsewhere, crevices had opened into the ground, showing entrances into tunnels below.
A line of powerful, silver figures moved slowly past the flying machines. Even from their distance, they looked colossal. But were they humans or robots? It was hard to tell. They marched in step, with a sinister gait.
“There. I think it’s the Plodder tribesmen,” said Shaani as she swiveled the field glasses. There was other movement to the left of the main buildings, over at one of the gaps in the ground. Humanoids were trudging out of a tunnel mouth, carrying buckets and baskets loaded with rubble. They were guarded by a giant figure dressed in powered armor. “Slave labor.”
The Sand Shark had been parked down at the bottom of the cliffs behinds them, under cover of the rocks and trees. There were enough opossums and radioactive rock wallabies in the area to confuse anyone trying to locate the Sand Shark crew using heat sensors. From the rock ridge high above, they spied out the lay of the land.
Things did not look good.
Xoota took the binoculars again and tried to get a fix on the armored figures that guarded the laborers. “The computer intelligence must have awakened Benek’s frozen superhumans. Looks like they’ve loaded up on gear from the armory.” The quoll sucked a fang in thought. “How many brides did he say there were?”
“Two thousand.”
“Kack. That’s quite an army.” She passed the binoculars back toward Rustle and Wig-wig. “Do you guys want to look?”
Actually that wasn’t going to help. Rustle seemed to see via light receptors on his skin, and she doubted Wig-wig could see anything through the glasses, but the earwigs were keen to use the binoculars anyway. They crowded over each other, all trying to peer in at once while Xoota patiently held the binoculars steady.
Shaani pulled out her computer reader. “Computer, starports.”
“Basic primer?”
“Primer and guide to typical layout and components.” Video and commentaries ran. Shaani sat and concentrated on the screen, her intelligent, rat face perfectly absorbed.
Xoota whipped out her hand and snatched another huge locust from a nearby grass stalk. She waved it toward Shaani. “These locusts are really good. Do you want one?”
“No, thank you. I’m all bugged out.”
Xoota crunched the juicy bug and watched the distant starport in thought.
Shaani read her files and watched her videos then eased back up to the ridge. She pointed to the buildings far below. “Right, so it all seems pretty pukkah. Those dart things over there are orbital shuttlecraft. The ones on the little landing pads are atmosphere vehicles—commuter transports. Hangars and maintenance … that’s the passenger terminal. And communications—including the main computer … There, where the big tower is.”
“Right where they have the slaves digging.”
“True.” The white rat pointed to a squat tower. “That’s apparently an emergency heat vent for the power system. So there must be a reactor somewhere below.”
“A reactor?”
“A sort of power generator. Really big scale. Like an atom bomb but exploding very slowly under control.”
“Oh, wacko.” Xoota looked askance at the starport. She sat down with her back to the rocks. “So to kill this thing, we would have to blow up, short out, or fry the main computer. And any way we do it, we also have to deal with the unfrozen superhumans.”
Shaani pondered, tugging at her whiskers. “It should be possible. We would need to disrupt communications so the artificial intelligenc
e can’t beam out and escape then detonate the reactor. Theoretically it can be done.”
“Theoretically?”
“Never fear. I’m a lab rat.” Shaani seemed perfectly happy. “Science is the art of turning theory into practice. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” The rat slapped Xoota on the bottom. “Come on. Let’s get back to the ship. I need to think through a few details.”
“You go. I’ll be there in a while.” Xoota crouched below the rock ridge, looking for any apparent weaknesses. “There seem to be pipes or something over to the left of the starport. I’ll see if I can climb a tree and get a better look.”
“Well, keep Wig-wig with you. He can watch for danger.” Shaani rose to go. “Come along, Rustle. Let’s get your leaves all moistened down. You look like you need watering.”
Rustle lifted Shaani down from her perch high in the rocks. She doffed her straw hat to him in thanks. With the great plant shambling happily along behind her, the rat made her way back to their beloved ship.
The Sand Shark stood beside a wide, brown water hole. Dried creek beds ran all through the area. During the wet season, the region would be lush with streams. But the last remnants of the local water supply were dwindling, patrolled by flash dragonflies. It seemed something else was living down there in the water too; bubbles appeared on the surface from time to time. But whatever it was, it had thus far kept cautiously far away. Budgie was foraging, scratching busily at a mound of dirt near the bow, turning up roots and tubers. Shaani waved to him, but the bird was busy and didn’t see.
