Arges head snapped up as something I’d said sank in. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the important part. “Do you think they know we’re here on the moon?”
“We’re still here, aren’t we?” I asked. “They didn’t try to destroy us, did they?”
“Maybe—”
“Arges, you know as well as I do they would have attacked us if they’d seen us.”
“Well…yes, you’re right,” he finally admitted.
“Okay, so we have the element of surprise. If we drop a couple of nukes on them, or even orbital bombardment rounds, we can sterilize the infection site before they spread out. Problem solved.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but that’s not going to work. As soon as we bring the ship up to full power, they’re going to see us. By the time the rounds land, they’ll be gone, and we’ll have lost our chance. We need to take them by surprise while they’re all in one big group. If they get away, who knows where they’ll go? They may even leave this star system, and then what? I, for one, don’t want to explain to the Mrowry how we let a group of Ware’Ulfs get away.”
Arges’ eyes darted from side to side as if looking for a Mrowry. There weren’t any of the large tiger-like aliens onboard our research ship, of course—it was only the three of us, all Psiclopes—but neither of us wanted to have them angry with us. They had fangs and claws…and tended to hold a grudge. Not good.
“What do you have in mind?” Brontes asked, ever the more practical one. I’d forgotten she was behind me.
“Like I said, we need to get them all gathered up in a big group—”
“How are you going to do that?” Arges asked.
“Well, tomorrow is the full moon there—”
“You can’t let them do that!” Brontes interrupted. Of course, her support came at a price. The bleeding heart price.
“Yes I can,” I replied. “It’s the only way this is going to work.” The Ware’Ulfs were a plague on the galaxy; they were also caused by a plague. A couple of centuries ago, the Wares were a generally canine-looking race that got along well enough with its neighboring systems…until an exploration team found a new planet. The survey team contracted some sort of contagion on the planet that turned them into shape-shifters. The Wares had always been religious, but the contaminated ones changed their race’s name to Ware’Ulf, or “Super Wares,” as they believed they now had super powers. All of the survey team contracted the disease, and they quickly contaminated the rest of their ship when they returned. When they arrived at their home planet, the disease spread quickly, and it was worldwide before any of the remaining “normals” knew they had anything to worry about.
“I have to go tomorrow—the moon is the key. When the full moon rises, they will go hunting for their rituals. It’s the best time to get close to their ship. There are several villages in the area and all of the Ware’Ulfs will be out gathering victims. It’s my chance to get in there, plant an antimatter bomb, and get back out again before they return.”
“Sounds good,” Arges said, mostly because I was the one with the dangerous part; all he had to do was sit on his butt. He looked at Brontes. “What’s the problem?”
Brontes sniffed. “You have obviously forgotten what the Ware’Ulf ritual entails.”
“It’s a ritual of conversion, right?” Arges asked.
I winced. I really hadn’t wanted to get into this with Brontes. “Yes,” I said, hoping to head her off. “The Wares go out to the locals and bring back a number of them to pass on the disease to.”
“By biting them!” Brontes screeched. “And eating the ones they don’t convert!”
I nodded. I’d seen the pictures from the last time. It wasn’t pretty. “Absolutely,” I said, thinking fast. “And that’s why I have to do this, and do it tomorrow night. If I am able to sneak into their camp and set the bomb, then get away in time, we can destroy the camp at the height of the ritual, before anyone gets bitten or eaten.” I smiled. “Not only is it the one thing we can do; it’s also the right thing to do.”
“But…but…” Brontes struggled to reconcile what I was doing—killing people, which she abhorred—with something she hated even more. “But you’re going to kill a lot of innocent people living in the area.”
“If we have to wait for assistance, we will have to sterilize the planet, and then everyone on the planet below is going to die.” I shrugged. “You know as well as I do that the local villagers are doomed. If I could help them, I would. I can’t. The best I can do is give them a painless end, prior to what the Ware’Ulfs are going to do to them. It’s the most compassionate thing we can do.”
Brontes sniffed and threw her head back. “Well, I still don’t like it.” With that, she turned and left.
I turned back to Arges and looked at him expectantly.
“Do it,” he said. “And don’t talk about it anymore with her.”
“Sure thing,” I said, finally able to proceed the way I knew was best. And not talking to Brontes? That was the best thing I’d heard this century.
* * *
Middle of the Largest Land Mass, Planet Earth
As darkness fell the next night, I brought the shuttle to a stop at a clearing two miles away from the Ware’Ulf encampment. I had stayed behind the terrain on my approach and was pretty sure they wouldn’t have seen the relatively small power source of the shuttle.
Quickly, I went into the passenger compartment and put on my armor and pistol. Although it wouldn’t stop any of the lasers or railguns the Ware’Ulfs had, when the full Mark XXXVII Mod 4 suit was worn, it could generate a force field that bent the light around the wearer. When a soldier was motionless, he was almost invisible in most circumstances. The faster I moved, the more likely I was to be seen, though, so I would have to go slowly, especially when near the encampment.
Picking up my trident, I walked out the back of the shuttle into the forest, turned on the suit’s force field, and proceeded to the Ware’Ulfs’ camp. One of the reasons I had picked my landing area was the fact that the local villages mostly lay in other directions. With any luck, I wouldn’t run into the enemy by coming from this direction. I looked toward where the moon was going to rise, and saw a sliver of it over the horizon. I would have to hurry.
As I approached the camp, a mass of howling voices broke out, sending shivers down my spine. Looking to the east, the full moon was above the horizon; the hunt was on. While I expected the aliens to head toward the villages, I knew they could be headed in any direction, and I slowed my steps to make myself harder to see. The Ware’Ulfs weren’t a nocturnal species, giving me a bit of an advantage, especially with the optics my helmet provided. I made it to the camp without being spotted.
Their ship rested on one side of a large, open lea—a grassland in the middle of the forest. I wondered briefly why the locals hadn’t used it for farming, and then I saw the mounds. The area was a burial facility for the locals. It was probably sacred to them; it would be less so after this evening, regardless of how everything turned out.
The area around the ship looked like the Ware’Ulfs were expecting quite the party when everyone returned. A number of large bonfires had been laid out, as well as several cooking fires with huge spits, big enough for one of the locals to fit on. There were also a large number of stakes driven into the ground with chains attached, obviously ready to hold prisoners when the hunting parties returned. The only living beings in the area appeared to be one of the Ware’Ulfs walking around on guard duty and one of the local villagers already attached to one of the stakes.
I didn’t know what the human had done to merit their attention—maybe he had seen the encampment and walked up to investigate—but whatever he had done, he was surely regretting the decision that had put him in the Ware’Ulfs’ clutches. His clothes were in tatters, and he looked miserable, sitting with his back against the stake he was chained to. I couldn’t see bite marks on his neck from where I stood, so he probably hadn’t been converted yet. Not that it rea
lly mattered; my mission was destruction, not rescue.
Slowly, I stalked along the tree line to the alien ship. Almost two hundred meters square, the database onboard our ship had identified it as a destroyer. It looked like it had seen some battle; its sides were scored with laser marks, and there were new plates covering other damaged areas where the beams had penetrated. However it had escaped its planet, the crew hadn’t done it without a fight. I made a mental note to send out a warning when I got back to the ship—the picket ship at their planet had probably been destroyed. If so, this was just the first indication of a much larger problem. Ware’Ulfs with free reign to the galaxy again? I shuddered.
I needed to focus, I realized, or I wouldn’t be going back to give the alarm. Even though I’d had some combat and martial arts training, I was a research scientist, not a combat soldier, and I hadn’t noticed that the sentry had been walking toward me while I was surveying the ship.
It must have seen something that caught its eye, as it was purposefully walking in my direction. I froze, then realized my mistake. By walking down the tree line, I probably made it easier for him to see me as my travel would fuzz out one tree after another. I would have been better either deeper in the woods or out in the clear area.
Slowly, I drew my laser pistol as it approached. While the trident would have killed it easily—it was an explosive projection device that hurled microscopic bits of antimatter which exploded on contact, somewhat like the humans’ grenades—it also would have let anyone in the area know something was going on. My mission was supposed to be one of stealth. Get in, set the device, and get out without being seen. Massive explosions were not stealthy.
As the Ware’Ulf approached, I realized it wasn’t walking exactly toward me, but off to the side. It passed me, and I raised the laser pistol and put the targeting crosshairs on the back of the alien’s head. It took two more steps beyond me then froze for a second. I froze as well, my crosshairs centered on the alien. It sniffed once, then again, and then dove to the right. I fired, but my shot missed, going through the spot where his head had been.
The creature rolled with his rifle, ending up with the barrel of it pointing just to the side of me, and he fired. I threw myself to the other side. He’d probably been hoping for that, I realized, as he continued to fire his rifle, tracking my movement.
Rather than continue to roll, and allow him to eventually hit me, I spun back the other way. He continued firing in the direction I’d been heading for a second, then, realizing his mistake, he shifted back to where I was. By that point, the crosshairs were centered between his yellow eyes. I fired, and the bolt drilled into his head. The Ware’Ulf dropped, dead.
Well, shit, I thought as I got to my feet. That was stupid.
“Help me.” It took a second before I was able to translate what the voice had said, but I had loaded all of the major languages of the planet into my implants, and I finally hit the right one. “They captured me and won’t let me go.”
The voice came from where the man was chained to the stake; he was looking in my direction. Of course, since I am a Psiclops and a lot shorter than a human, he was looking over my head, but he obviously knew where I was from the fight. I looked around—there didn’t appear to be any more of the Ware’Ulfs in the vicinity. If there had been, and they’d heard the fight, I’m sure they would have come running.
I turned off the force field, and his eyes settled on me, although they widened slightly. Whether that was because he was surprised to see me materialize out of the air, or because I obviously wasn’t human, I didn’t know. After a second, his priorities reinitialized. “Help me, please,” he repeated.
“Keep quiet,” I said. “I will be there momentarily.”
I picked up the trident from where I’d dropped it during the fight and jogged over to the woods near the spaceship. I holstered the pistol then set the trident to self-destruct. That wasn’t something people generally tried to do, and it involved disabling several fail-safes that prevented someone from accidentally doing what I intended. I checked the reservoir one more time before enabling the self-destruct—it was showing one gram of antimatter. When the antimatter containment failed, it would detonate with the force of 42 kilotons of TNT. That would wipe out everything within at least three kilometers. I felt badly for the locals, but their lives were over anyway with the Ware’Ulfs there. This way, it might not hurt so much. The people who lived close, but outside the kill zone, though…I was sorrier for them.
After confirming I wanted to do something stupid like breaching the antimatter containment, I set the timer for an hour and positioned the trident just inside the forest, covering it with leaves. Backing up several steps, I couldn’t hear the whine as the rifle overloaded. Perfect. Mission complete, I needed to get out of the camp before the Ware’Ulfs returned, and I definitely needed to be well clear of the blast radius.
I turned and saw the captive still looking at me. He held his shackled hands out imploringly, and I sighed. I couldn’t save all of the humans in the area, but at least I could save one. Brontes would be happy, and it would annoy Arges. That also was perfect. I raced over to where he waited, pulling out my laser pistol as I ran.
“I’ll have you out of there in a second,” I said. Thumbing the power setting to “Low,” I melted off one of the links of the chain attaching him to the pole. His hands would still be shackled together, but I didn’t have time to work on those—cutting them apart would have burned his wrists. “What’s your name?”
“What?” he asked. I glanced up; he looked confused by everything going on. “Uh, Ivan,” he added after a few seconds.
The chain separated, and he started to turn in the opposite direction of my ship. “No,” I said. “That’s the wrong way.”
He shook his head. “My village is this way.”
“The aliens are also that way,” I replied. I pointed in the direction of my ship. “We need to go this way.” He looked like he still wanted to argue, so I added, “I’m going this way. Come with me if you want to live.”
The man gave a minimal shrug. “Okay,” he finally said. “Lead on.”
I ran off into the woods without looking back. At that stage, I was more interested in how little time I had to get to my ship than I was about whether he was following me. If he wanted to go get eaten or stay in the blast zone, that was his choice. Periodically, though, I heard him swear as he ran into something, and I knew he was still behind me.
We made it back to my ship, and I showed him where to sit as I started the engines. Within two minutes, I had run through the abbreviated checklist and was airborne. We traveled in silence for several minutes. I looked over at him a couple of times, and he was staring out the window, his eyes huge. Living in the middle of nowhere, he’d probably never heard of airplanes, much less spacecraft, and being captured by shapeshifters had probably destroyed everything he believed to be right and holy. I’d forgotten how primitive his people were in many ways; all of this probably had him in shock.
The timer on my wrist went off, and I flew behind a mountain, looking for a place to land. I didn’t care where—anywhere I could set down. There! A small road—not much more than a path. Although the shuttle was fairly sturdy, I didn’t want to be in the air when the shockwave from the explosion went past. I settled onto the path and shut down the shuttle’s systems quickly.
“We’ll continue in a moment,” I explained.
When Ivan didn’t say anything, I turned to look at him and saw him twitching as he looked up at the full moon. As I watched, hair started pouring from his follicles, all across his body.
Oh, shit.
Either one of the Ware’Ulfs had bitten him…or worse, this was a fully-mature Ware’Ulf. No, I realized; the disease took two days to fully infect a host. This couldn’t be Ivan turning; he had to be a mature Ware’Ulf.
Frantically, my eyes searched the cockpit for a weapon…a tool…anything I could use against the creature. Nothing. My pistol was gone,
lost somewhere in the woods during my flight to the shuttle. The only thing I had was my helmet, which wouldn’t work well as a missile weapon, and I was not going to reach across to try to strangle him, especially not with the fangs and claws I could see sprouting.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I released my safety straps and sprinted to the back of the shuttle. The cargo compartment was as bare as the cockpit had been. Why didn’t the shuttle have weapons?
The ramp in the back of the cargo compartment went down without me pushing the button, and Ivan the Ware’Ulf was waiting for me.
“What do we have here?” he asked. “This is a surprise; we thought we were the only aliens on this planet. I guess we were wrong.” His lips pulled back from his snout in what I took to be his attempt at a smile. All it did was serve to show off his fangs, which didn’t look friendly in the slightest. “How many other Psiclopes are there here?”
“Just me,” I replied, my eyes darting back and forth around the compartment. He was too close to the ramp—I couldn’t put it up again without him being able to make it inside before it closed. Still no weapons; I would have to flee out the mid-cabin door—if I could make it—as trying to fight the monster in the interior of the ship was a losing proposition. I needed space if I was going to have a chance.
The creature stepped onto the ramp, sealing for good that avenue of escape. “Come now,” he said. “I know you Psiclopes never go anywhere by yourselves…there’s always a station or an outpost or something. If you tell us where they are, we won’t kill you. We are going to convert you, of course, but it doesn’t hurt that much.”
I glanced at the timer on my wrist. There were only seconds remaining before the explosion; I’d make my move when the antimatter detonated. I just needed to stall him. “What were you chained up for?” I asked.
“Oh, I was a bad boy. I killed one of the villagers that my leader wanted to convert.” The Ware’Ulf did the scary smile thing again. “What can I say?” He shrugged. “I got hungry.” He took another step into the cargo compartment, and I knew if he got any closer, I wouldn’t be able to make it out the door before he caught me.
The Dogs of God Page 14
