by S. H. Jucha
Orbit guided the team through the urban center toward the nearest group of protected buildings.
Occasionally, a gray accompanied by juveniles attacked the group. The adult was shot, and the young were stomped.
“Nests are nearby,” Tacnock commented, after the third rush by a gray and the juveniles.
“It makes no sense for the females to hole up here with their young,” Sam said.
“It does if there is competition for food,” Jess replied.
“They should be competing for the field animals ... oh,” Sam objected, before he understood.
“Yes,” Homsaff interjected, having caught Jess’s concept. “The larger juveniles will hunt the younger ones.”
“There must be a time in the Colony’s lifecycle, when the young move from an instinct-driven mentality to full sentience,” Kasie mused.
“Interesting thought, Kasie, but what does it matter?” Sam asked rhetorically. “They’re dangerous in either state.”
Kasie could only nod in agreement with Sam’s point.
At the first protected site, a two-meter-high fence surrounded a pair of buildings. One of them was squat and wide and the other tall and narrow.
Jess picked up a metal bar from the skeletal hand of a Quall. He tossed it at the fence. Sparks flew from the mesh before the bar dropped to the ground.
“Significant current,” Tacnock remarked.
“We’ll split into two teams, circle the buildings, and see if we can get the attention of anyone inside,” Jess ordered.
31: Final Stand
The two teams circled the buildings. They yelled, jumped up and down, waved their arms, and threw objects at the viewports. Nothing worked. No one answered their hails.
When they met on the far side, Jess regarded the electrified fence and worked on deciding his next move. That his sister was in his line of sight gave him an idea. “Kasie, can you sense anyone inside?” he asked.
“The fence interferes with my reception, Jess,” Kasie replied. Then she yelped in surprise, when she was suddenly hoisted off the ground to perch on Sam’s shoulder.
“How about now?” Sam asked.
Kasie looked down at Sam’s grinning face. She sensed his emotions, which embarrassed her. The Omnian was thoroughly enjoying the sensation of her riding on his broad shoulder.
“Kasie,” Jess prodded, when he noticed his sister’s focus was on Sam and not on the enclosed compound.
“Give me a moment,” Kasie shot back. She yanked her attention from Sam and directed her powers at the buildings. When she received nothing, she opened her gates fully and strained to sense something.
“I don’t get anything, Jess,” Kasie said. “It could be the building material is impenetrable to my abilities.”
“Come down,” Jess said. “We’ll try another location.”
Kasie felt Sam grip her hips and lower her carefully to the ground. When she turned around, he was smiling broadly at her.
Following Orbit’s directions, Jess led the team to another protected center. It was a single, tall building with larger viewports. Every previous method to gain attention was tried again.
When nothing worked, Kasie looked at Sam and indicated his shoulder. This time, she expected to be politely lifted, but he scooped her up so quickly that she burst into laughter at his enthusiasm. Her emotional release swept through the team.
“Oops,” Sam remarked. His lips quirked in a conspiratorial smile, and Kasie chuckled, as she swiftly shut down her gates.
When Sam stepped to the fence, Kasie opened her receiving gates and earnestly attempted to sense sentients. She wasn’t successful.
The group didn’t manage a single contact after testing nearly twenty secured sites.
“We return tomorrow,” Jess said, ending the team’s attempts.
At the traveler, the shadows were recovered, and the group returned to the Judgment. Following the day’s dismal failure to locate a single survivor, emotions were subdued.
The team ate evening meal, and Jess and Lucia were left alone in her quarters.
“Why do you think the Qualls aren’t responding to our entreaties?” Lucia asked.
“I’ve tried to think of encouraging answers,” Jess replied, “but nothing fits. Do you know what bothers me?”
“Tell me,” Lucia encouraged.
“Julius and Brutus reported four hundred seventeen kills,” Jess said. “That total was accrued in one small field. How long does it take the insectoid life cycle to produce that concentration of juveniles?”
“Orbit noted that none of the Colony’s shuttles landed near that field, which means the insectoid adults didn’t originally populate the area,” Lucia pointed out.
“Then we’re left with an ugly reason for why we haven’t received a response from inside the buildings,” Jess said. He linked with Homsaff and Lucia.
Afterward, Jess and Lucia retired for the evening. They intended an early start on the next cycle.
In the morning, a meal was eaten aboard the traveler, as Sharon guided the ship down below.
The landing spot was the same, and the exit routine repeated. The shadows swiftly cleared the field. The juvenile count was less than a hundred. The team observed the newcomers feasting on the carcasses of the kills from the previous cycle.
“Ugly little things,” Sam muttered. His disgust was obvious to everyone who heard him.
The route from the traveler to the first target enclosure was clear, and the warriors were disappointed.
When they arrived, Jess studied the buildings and the fence. He thought he’d done everything possible to attract the inhabitants’ attentions. There was nothing left to do but discover what he feared.
“Simlan, cut off the fence corner,” Jess requested.
The Dischnya squad leader powered the plasma rifle, narrowed the beam, and dialed back the output. Then he selected an angle that would minimize damage beyond the fence.
At a touch of the firing stud, the plasma discharge leapt from the rifle and dissolved a three-meter section of the fence.
The warriors led the others through the opening. Everyone was careful to avoid the hot glowing tips of fence mesh.
The Qualls had smartly chosen buildings with solid doors, and Simlan was directed to burn through the first set.
Inside, it was evident that the team entered the lobby of a commercial building. The lights still burned, but the lobby was empty.
“Separate into pairs. Find the citizens,” Jess ordered.
The search of the building uncovered two hundred forty-eight Qualls — all dead.
“We’ve no idea what a normal Quall is supposed to look like,” Tacnock said, standing beside a collection of bodies. “But I doubt they appeared this gaunt when they were alive.”
“Jess,” Lucia called out from a walk-in food locker.
Jess stepped over to take a look inside. Lucia had shaken out containers.
“Empty. Every one of them,” Lucia remarked angrily.
“There aren’t any injures on the bodies, Captain,” Homsaff added, staring closely at her third emaciated corpse.
“They starved to death,” Jess concluded. “They barricaded themselves in these buildings, and they waited and hoped for help to arrive ... for the alliance to rescue them.”
The team entered and searched more protected sites. The result was always the same. Bodies were found in chairs, on beds, or lying on the floor. They were emaciated and desiccated.
Kasie sensed the growing anger among the veterans. They were incensed by the deaths of the Qualls, who appeared to be a gentle race. Only Lucia didn’t register significantly to Kasie, but she could see the grim expression on the commodore’s face. It was a sign to Kasie that Lu
cia had witnessed numerous deaths in the past and was prepared to endure great loss.
As gently and carefully as Kasie could manage, she tried to ease the emotional turmoil in the minds of the team.
Jess picked up on the subtle manipulation, and he kept quiet. At one point, he stepped from behind his sister, cupped her head in his hand, and kissed her temple.
Kasie smiled at her brother and kept up her subtle pressure.
As starlight faded, Jess called it quits, and the team retreated to the ship.
Before they exited the traveler into the Judgment’s bay, Jess stood in the aisle and addressed the team. “We’ll search every urban center on this planet,” he said. “If there are survivors, we need to find them.”
* * * * *
Time wasn’t on the team’s side.
The Quall mission was to survey not to promote encounters. Therefore, it wasn’t a priority to destroy the comms buried in the bows of the Colony’s shuttles.
The failure to prosecute the shuttles allowed the insectoids to spread the warning of the enemy’s arrival in system, the loss of the ring, and the landing of a single ship.
A single ship of invaders represented a tempting target for the reds and grays. It would be easy to eliminate such a small force.
The insectoids’ challenge was to anticipate where the enemy’s ship would land next.
Jess inadvertently provided that information to the insectoids, when he requested Orbit lay out the route Sharon would follow to transport the group from urban site to urban site.
The path Orbit designed was based on logic and efficiency, as befitting the algorithms of a SADE.
The route was also completely comprehensible to Colony members, who shared reports of the various landing sites.
When the team’s first three days of efforts produced nothing for Jess and his companions, he directed half of Simlan’s squad to carry plasma rifles. Then he assigned Lucia, the veterans, and the other half of the Dischnya squad to accompany the rifle bearers.
With the new arrangement, urban centers were checked in hours instead of an entire period of starlight. Fences were burned, doors blasted open, and buildings searched. Thousands and thousands of desiccated bodies were found.
The Omnians and the alliance members were aghast at a race retreating behind fences and waiting passively to die.
“I think I understand the Qualls,” Kasie said, after another unfruitful cycle.
“What do you understand?” Sam prodded.
“They’re in their buildings starving to death, but there are no signs of violence at the end, when they succumb to starvation. No one fought over the last scraps of food.”
“Come to think of it, we haven’t seen destroyed insectoid skeletons along the thoroughfares or outside the buildings,” Sam added.
“We haven’t seen weapons either. It would appear that they were completely and irrevocably averse to killing,” Tacnock surmised.
“Then they died for their beliefs,” Homsaff said, with a growl. “If you don’t fight to live, it’s certain that an enemy will deliver you an early death.”
The warriors echoed the queen’s sentiment with growls of their own and a few muted barks.
“But not at the pincers of the Colony,” Jess contested hotly. “No race deserves to be eradicated by an insectoid invasion.” Jess stared into Homsaff’s yellow eyes.
The queen tipped her muzzle. “It’s an ugly end for any race,” Homsaff allowed.
Homsaff’s remark cooled Jess’s short-lived flare of temper. They had checked five urban centers on this eighth day of searching, and they were tired. He decided they would investigate one more population center before making for the Judgment.
The exchange was a reminder to Homsaff that though she and her warriors considered themselves Omnians, they weren’t human. As for herself, she was fine with the distinction.
The setting star created long shadows, as Sharon landed the traveler on an empty stretch of thoroughfare. The long roadways connected the Quall population centers. Her landing site was a long way from the urban center. Between the ship and the first buildings, the roadway was littered with abandoned vehicles and scattered bones like every other site the team had visited.
The thoroughfare ran through a steep gorge, and thick woods bordered the spaces between the roadway and the sheer rock faces.
Jess led the team through the scattered transports, and every member focused on not stepping on Quall remains.
By the time starlight faded, six protected building sites were entered and searched, only to find more dead.
Jess called a halt to their efforts, and the team trudged across the urban center to enter the thoroughfare by which they’d arrived at the location.
Simlan was the first to pick up the scent, and he growled a warning, which alerted the other warriors. They swiftly formed a defensive perimeter and eyed the woods on either side of the roadway.
“Simlan?” Jess asked quietly.
“They’re out there, Captain. They’ve got numbers on their side,” Simlan answered.
“You didn’t smell them before?” Sam asked in a whisper.
“They weren’t there when we entered this site two hours ago,” Simlan replied.
“Ambush,” Tacnock offered in a hush.
“They intend to come at us from behind, Jess,” Lucia said, glancing toward their rear. “They’ll drive us forward until we’re boxed in on all sides.”
Jess regarded the buildings they’d just left. He considered retreating, but he had a disturbing image of the team joining the Qualls.
“We’re about three times farther to the traveler than your implant can transmit,” Lucia replied quietly.
Jess frowned, and then he grinned. Staring into the sky, he waved his launcher. Then he hurriedly made his request with hand signs, repeating the message twice.
Lucia chuckled at what Jess had sent to Orbit. She grabbed his head and planted a kiss on his temple.
Jess’s implant chronometer counted down, and he prepped the team for action.
The Dischnya, who were armed with the plasma rifles, burned the woods directly to either side of the roadway. Intense heat fed on the fuel offered by trees and shrubs. Flames shot up trunks and branches, eating the dense vegetation.
The conflagration forced the team to move, and they raced forward.
Lucia was right in her estimation of the Colony’s strategy.
As the team advanced down the roadway, insectoids poured from the woods. They advanced on their enemy from the sides and in front of them, closing off their escape.
The insectoid numbers forced the team to halt, and the rifle bearers held their fire, lest they be consumed in the fires they were creating. Behind them, the roadway was inundated by burning embers created from superheated tree sap. Vehicles were catching fire.
On Jess’s orders, the rifle bearers retreated to the team’s center, and those with Loopah weapons took the brunt of the attack. The team took cover between two transports, which sat side-by-side, and used them as their redoubt.
Jess and Lucia climbed on one vehicle’s roof, and Sam and Tacnock occupied the other.
The pop-pops of expended darts at horrendous rates testified to the speed with which the team emptied drums and feverishly replaced them.
Jess noted that large juveniles had joined the attacking adults. He focused on sighting and firing, but in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help thinking that he’d never seen so many insectoids in one place.
’s urgent sending in Jess’s implant.
While Sharon swung the traveler around, Jess visualized the transports’ roofs and marked them for the shadows.
“Off the vehicles,” Jess yelled to his team. When he saw everyone clear, he sent,
Each shadow stood in the hatchway, selected pointed leg endings, and jumped onto the vehicle marked by their assault commander.
“Everyone, down,” Jess called out, forgetting his implant could have gotten a quicker result.
The team huddled between the transports, and the shadows’ lasers eliminated adult and young alike.
Homsaff said.
Jess thought it was as good a reason as any to explain the lack of fire from the reds. Explosions interrupted his thoughts.
“Black space,” Lucia muttered, on hearing of their growing predicament.
Sharon’s emotions, which wrapped her thoughts, told Jess how dire their situation had become.
