CHAPTER 4
Clementine 3 moved above the surface of the moon, her orbital radius back up to 55 kilometers and her electronics in safe mode. She was powered down, her mapping and detailed observations long ago completed. Her shutdown and standby command sequences had been uplinked from earth 848 days, ten hours, eleven minutes, thirty-nine seconds and 0.0293 milliseconds ago. The only subsystems still active were ATTITUDE CONTROL, monitoring the sun angle to assure sufficient solar power on the panels, CLOCK, recording the unending passage of time, and RECEIVER, monitoring radio transmissions from earth. Clementine’s imaging systems were shut off, as were her central processor and transmitter. She had obediently made herself blind, dumb, and nearly deaf except for the minuscule voltage across her receiver channel. She had autonomously awakened herself 381 days ago in response to an anomalous voltage in her communications subsystem, noting the failure of one of its thirty-two logic processor chips, which began sending waves of static through transmitter number one’s control circuit. Clementine had taken it offline only to find that transmitter number two was acting up as well. In the absence of command transmissions from earth to help solve her dilemma she’d had no option but to resume safe mode, wait, and listen.
Before powering down she had rechecked her orbital parameters to a high precision. The variance of her orbit from perfect circularity was less than 0.000001% and its period was 99 minutes, 44 seconds and 87.63 milliseconds, plus or minus 10. Even without monitoring, the orbit would be stable for the next 2,200 years, plus or minus 28 years. All else, for Clementine 3, was waiting. She didn’t even point her instruments down as she passed over the former subject of her most thorough surface observations: Phaeon Crater.
Phaeon, however, was not as inactive as Clementine.
Great changes had occurred in the crater’s dark depths. In fact, those depths were no longer entirely dark. Although the human explorers who had come there were dead, signs of life were everywhere among the buildings of Phaeon. Towers and pavilions once punctured by meteor strikes were repaired, their lines cleanly rectangular or circular. Windows, once vacant and black, now glowed with interior lights. Here and there living beings moved past the windows, going about their business within.
Of all the buildings, none rivaled the huge central step-pyramid, which lofted its dome-surmounted top 500 meters above Phaeon’s floor. The dome rose out of the shadows to bathe in perpetual sunlight just grazing the moon’s surface at the pole. An immense gun-barrel projected from a vertical slit in the dome and pointed in the direction of earth, which floated just above the horizon. Several times a minute the gun adjusted its pointing angle and a wisp of nearly invisible blue light emanated from it, lancing toward earth. A patch of red-orange flame flared briefly at each earthly target point and then faded. Then the turret gun adjusted its angle and unleashed another bolt of blue-hot energy. Across the gibbous disk of earth, plumes of black smoke rose from hundreds of points in North and South America where the beam had touched down. On earth’s unlit eastern quarter, burning targets delineated the continents of Europe and Africa with hundreds of dull red spots glowing against the blackness of a world suddenly without electrical power.
At the base of the step-pyramid, a huge red-lighted hangar doorway yawned wide. From the scarlet glow of its interior emerged a titanic silver-winged streamlined spacecraft, rolling ponderously out of the facility on a set of three heavy metal rails. Once the craft had emerged fully, twin rocket engines beneath its tail fins ignited, propelling it outward along the rails. These guided it up the crater wall to the rim’s edge where the ship leapt into space and its rockets accelerated it outbound on a trajectory toward earth. Soon, another spacecraft emerged from the hangar’s red recess, ignited its engines, and raced along the rails following its predecessor.
Far above the hangar, the giant gun-turret dome at the pyramid’s apex was surmounted by a smaller circular observatory. Figures inside its windows performed their duties of supervision and control, lit by dim red safelights. They were human-sized, two-legged, unearthly beings, half reptile and half bird, known to themselves as Kra. In one window, a lone individual watched another ship accelerate up the rails and disappear into space. This observer was Gar.
Seated on a couch inside the observation window, Gar cocked his head to one side and peered out at the blue-green world floating above the horizon. His yellow iris flexed and its black pupil narrowed as another flash of blue light leapt from the light cannon. Swiveling his long neck in a bird-like motion, Gar focused his other eye on the dark smoke wisps tainting the air of the planet. His long jaws gaped slightly, exposing rows of sharp reptilian fangs. He clacked his teeth together lightly, a nervous habit of Kra who thought deeply, or worried over a difficult problem.
“Distoonoh, Gar-hoo?” asked a second Kra, entering the observation room and giving Gar a subtle nod in greeting, as high-ranking Kra habitually did. “What troubles you, Lord Gar?”
“Nella danta,” Gar replied. “The same question.”
“This is no time for doubt.” The second Kra was Saurgon. He cast his yellow-green eyes on the fires and smoke on the planet and his feather mane swelled with pride. “The matter has been decided. And the initial elements of your wave of assault spacecraft are departing even now. Let your thoughts be clear, Gar. Delight in the fine efficiency with which our attack progresses. All eighty-one of your invasion ships will be en route within the morning.”
“The launch crews are prompt and meticulous,” murmured Gar.
“And my teams operating the killing ray are performing their duties flawlessly. The enemy below will be helpless within another rotation of the planet.”
“I have no doubt about that.”
“When you and your wave of landers arrive, any resistance to your attack will be brief. There will be much glory in this war. Your share, Gar, will be great. Only two chieftains among the Kra hold as high a rank as you. Oogon is already on the ground with his wave of landers. My only regret is that I must remain here at Illik base to command the killing beam and deal destruction to the enemy from above. But your wave of 729 warriors is a powerful force. Oogon and I will soon gladly share our victories with you. Does the thrill of battle not surge in your blood, Gar? To fight for the resurrection of Kra-Gol is the highest of callings.”
Gar watched another assault ship streak toward the blue-green planet.
“But is this the true path, Saurgon? The return to our world is not as the planners foretold. This world agonizing under your killing ray is our own world, I can see that, but it has changed. How can even the continents have moved? The great inland sea of Kra-Sogh has dried. Where, on this blue-jewel world is our capitol, Arran Kra?”
“Under a mountain, some say.”
“That may be so, but what is the meaning of such upheaval on our planet? Why did the spy probes return images of hoonahs, walking upright, tailless, hairless, nearly toothless—and yet ruling cities?”
“Yes, Gar, what inexplicable events gave them dominion? When did they come down from their trees?”
“And how long has this station slept, Saurgon? The instruments of the Watcher say no more than eight days, but my eyes tell me otherwise. Even Oogon, so intent on war making, cannot deny what is plain to see. The time of silence through which this station slept was infinitely longer than planned: thousands of years, perhaps millions. When the great meteor, Kela, collided with our world, rocks that crashed upon this station halted our machines for an eternity. This is what I believe. How else could the very constellations have drifted in the night sky? How else could so much have changed on Eka, our world? How else could such creatures as hoonahs have arisen to take our place?”
“The how and the why are insignificant, Gar. It is good that our weapons need not taste the blood of our own species. Our old enemies, the Khe, did not survive the impact of Kela. That is certain, else how could hoonahs have come to rule our world? The Khe could easily have suppressed the rise of such inferior creatures as these.”
“But I am still in doubt, Saurgon. A Kra should feel nothing but joy at the destruction of his enemies, but my ordinance is to preserve life. That is why I fear we do a great wrong by annihilating these hoonahs. Am I not the High Priest of the Cult of Life, and are not all species sacred to me?”
“You are High Priest of Life, even as I am High Priest of the Sky—and the death beam.”
“As High Priest of Life, I oversee the animals we bring down with us in our landing ships, those reborn here on Noqui with us, as sacrosanct. But these unknown species on the surface of Eka, what of them? The planners left no message to guide us. Who will preserve that which was not in the plan? Who will save that which needed no saving before today? Even the High Priest of Life is not so wise as to know the answer.”
Saurgon chuckled gutturally. “Oogon, the High Priest of War and Death, is already giving them the answer. His assault forces have begun their attacks.”
“Yes, Oogon is having his way, but only because his vote and yours overruled my vote to approach this world cautiously and without bloodletting.”
“A vote of the Triumvirate of War is final and all must obey.”
“Yes.”
“Besides, Gar, even you must admit these hoonahs have done great damage to our beloved Eka. Our probes detected pollution, habitat destruction, overpopulation, and species on the edge of extinction everywhere. I believe the hoonahs must be destroyed before they can do more harm. We Kra will save the planet from them and tend it responsibly, as we did before.”
Gar sighed. “So these hoonahs must die. They have come to their time of extinction. But is this the true path?”
The door to the observation room opened behind them.
“Gelloch natik, Gar-hoo,” said a third Kra as he entered. “Lord Gar, your assault ship is ready. The time for launch has come.”
Gar rose from the observation couch and returned his pilot’s salute by touching his thumb-claw first to the tip of his lower jaw, then to the center of his breast armor. Haneek nodded deeply in response and then turned quickly to leave. Gar followed him, but paused at the doorway and regarded Saurgon carefully.
“We will discuss this again,” he said, “before the last of the hoonahs are gone.”
Saurgon nodded but said nothing.
Turning to follow Haneek along the corridor, Gar observed the excitedness in his behavior. A yearling, Haneek was just fully-grown and eager for the taste of blood, as Gar could tell by his hurried movements and long stride. At one point he moved so swiftly that the low gravity could not hold him to the floor and he momentarily floated free of the corridor’s metal decking. It would be good to feel the full gravity of Eka.
Gar followed the pilot into an elevator, feeling much older, though he himself had only hatched from the birth tube two years previously. A Kra could learn much in a short time; too much, perhaps.
The elevator carried them quickly down to the sub-surface level of the pyramid, where Haneek resumed his hurried pace along the winding passageways with Gar following. On their way to the spacecraft hangar they passed the glass wall of clone chamber 87. Gar slowed to look at the long rows of glass tubes, each with a Kra warrior of the reserve division growing in the same way Gar and his mate Gana had been created in the first reconstitution after the station came back into operation. These new Kra would grow quickly to full adult size, stimulated by hormones and rich growth broth, and be ready for automatic hatching within another week. He recalled his visions from within the green liquid. His first conscious impressions were of Gana, suspended within the glass chamber of an adjacent growth tube, her ochre-colored eyes even then irresistibly attractive. Gar’s hackle-feathers rose briefly as he recalled those occasions when, looking beyond Gana’s tube, he had seen Oogon’s baleful red eyes piercing through the glass of the next tube to radiate jealousy and hatred toward him. It was unfortunate that the growth tube beside Oogon had cracked. In it had been a developing female, one who might have been Oogon’s mate. Oogon’s hatefulness had seemed particularly obvious at times when Gar had tried to nuzzle Gana’s nose through the glass between them.
Following Haneek farther along the corridor, Gar passed the door of the dissection lab where he had studied the corpses of hoonahs who had come to explore the station. They had contributed to their own demise by restoring the power. Once awakened, the Watcher had automatically closed the massive pressure doors in the hallways, impeding the hoonah explorers so greatly that an entire squad of Kra had hatched before the hoonahs could penetrate halfway to the clone chambers. It had been a simple matter for Oogon to organize a surprise attack that killed them all. They had died without a fight, all eight of them. Unarmed and with no laser reflective armor in their suits, most were easily dispatched by a single shot from a light gun or a single slash with an aseeta, dying horribly as air left their punctured suits and the vacuum in the corridors overcame them. Several escaped unscathed into the vast landscape of Noqui, only to die of asphyxiation when the oxygen in their suits ran out. These had been the best specimens for study.
Gar had dissected one of the creatures himself and he knew more than most Kra about the enemy they were facing. The oddly shaped being was unlike anything that existed in the times before Kela brought the Great Death. What sort of foe would these hoonahs be? Easy targets, nearly defenseless, as Oogon claimed? No, it seemed more likely that these creatures, advanced enough to come into space and reach this station, would be more formidable on their home ground than here on Noqui.
Nevertheless, once Gar had removed the space suit from the body of his hoonah subject, the creature had been remarkable for what it lacked, as much as what it possessed. Where a Kra bore three talons on the thumb and two fingers of each hand, as well as three hooked claws on the toes of each foot, hoonahs possessed only weak, flattened claws that looked like they could do little damage in hand-to-hand combat. Where a Kra’s jaws were long and lined with serrated dagger teeth, a hoonah had no more than a small hole for a mouth and this was covered with concealing lips and possessed small teeth fit only for nibbling and chewing soft foods—hardly weapons of war. In addition to the lack of any substantial jaws, the peculiar head of the hoonah also lacked any form of ornamentation projecting from the top or forehead. There was nothing on a hoonah so beautiful or impressive as a Kra’s forward-jutting, horn-covered crest, which easily doubled the height of its possessor’s head. Gar wondered what feature a hoonah displayed during courtship. His own crest so enraptured Gana that she never ceased to exclaim about its height and the beauty of its bright stripes of yellow, black and red.
The hoonah corpse had possessed a mane, in some ways reminiscent of a Kra’s neck-mane. It was not composed of feathers, but of thin strands of fur like that found on the rodents that were its ancestors. There had been no feathers anywhere on the body, which was primarily covered by naked skin. This nudity was striking to Gar, given that his own body was covered by fine black contour feathers. The picture of a hoonah was nearly complete when Gar imagined it standing in its un-rodent-like bipedal stance, almost as tall as a Kra—although a Kra with its long neck might rear up much higher than a hoonah could manage with its pathetically short and inflexible neck. It was easy for a Kra to look down on a hoonah, both figuratively and literally.
Finally, as Gar followed Haneek through the enclosed gangway leading to the ship’s cabin, he allowed himself one last thought regarding the hoonahs. He felt the supple sway of his long tail as he walked and knew that a tail was indispensable to proper balance and agility in battle. How did a hoonah manage to keep upright, let alone leap, sidestep and thrust in mortal combat with no tail whatsoever? This would become clear as the fighting progressed.
Despite the physical shortcomings of the enemy, Gar still felt concern about destroying such a peculiar species. Might there be some redeeming quality in a hoonah that was not obvious in an anatomical study? Gar wanted to learn this and much more before the last hoonah was gone from the planet.
He entered t
he ship’s cabin and took his place in the command seat beside Haneek, who was already busy adjusting instruments and flipping switches. Outside, the launch tunnel walls glowed a dull red.
Massive gear moved the ship onto the launch rails and Gar heard rumbling noises and bellowing through the thick metal of the cabin’s rear wall. The big animals in the ship’s hold were terrified of the motion. They were only dumb brutes and could not understand, as Gar did, that this flight would take them home to the world of their ancestors.
Gar settled down in his seat. For so momentous a journey, this one started with creeping slowness. Droning machinery moved the ship toward its launch point at an almost imperceptible crawl, and Gar’s thoughts turned to Gana.
Earlier this day he had gone to their quarters on the ninety-second floor of the pyramid to say his farewells. He had found Gana squatting in the center of the nesting couch’s oval depression with her arms tucked by her sides, her beautiful long neck curved sinuously and her head settled behind one shoulder. With her graceful tail arched out behind her she had looked perfectly calm and comfortable, the way an expectant mother Kra should look as eggs grew inside her. She took to the nest-couch more often now and the laying would begin in a matter of days and incubation would follow. Their brood would be one of the first not brought out of the automatic growth cylinders, but out of a living Kra mother.
Gana and the few other pregnant Kra females would wait here until the hoonahs were subdued. Then they would join their mates on the planet’s surface. Until that day, he would miss her dearly.
Gar’s reverie was interrupted by the sound of the launch engines whining to life. His cabin-mate glanced at him impatiently, awaiting the order to begin the launch sequence.
Gar uttered the command, “Ellok-ahey,” and Haneek pressed the launch button. A catapult driven by massive falling cable-weights within the pyramid thrust the ship forward on the launch rails. The twin engines roared and Gar felt himself pressed back as the ship accelerated along the rail-track. The throttles came to full power as they raced up the crater wall and then the glare of stark sunlight burst into the cabin as the ship shot off the end of the launch track. Clear of the crater rim with engines throbbing, they accelerated toward the blue planet, toward Eka, toward home.
Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall Page 4
