Here there be dragons... and more.
The sailor’s eyes widened and her mouth opened, but nothing came out – she never had time to scream. The bulkhead flared and vanished, taking her and two other baby-faced crewmen with it into open space. Chief’s eardrums popped, leaving only one dull tone, as she shoved the others through the far hatch, screaming orders no one could hear until the ship’s systems restored atmosphere. They felt the full effects of the enemy salvo vibrate furiously through the guts of the ship. She’d gotten five sailors past the immediate danger.
She knew the names of the three lost on the opposite side of that hatch, of course – Ari, Kaija, Ben – knew their hometowns, the stupid jokes they made in the mess, their plans for after the service. All of that would go into the letters to the families that she’d write and the captain would sign. Three letters. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing crewmates die or the stabbing pain from sudden decompression and re-pressurization; in any case, the survivors were screaming. Two were crying. One vomiting. Children.
As her hearing slowly recovered, Chief Freda Henry sensed the passageway rattle and roar with the power of Perun’s forward guns unleashing retribution. Somewhere, thousands of miles distant perhaps, someone was paying a steep price for daring to mess with them. Chief wanted to know what was going on, who they’d engaged, but that would wait. Right now, she ordered everyone aft and down one deck to the suit locker. They needed tools to begin the repairs, and pressurized armor – this fight wasn’t over yet.
She called in replacements for the lost sailors, got everyone suited up, and began the painstaking job of securing each compartment. It was grunt work. She called out the checklist over the suit comms. “Pressure check. Seals.”
“Normal, intact,” Herschel called out, his eyes on the scanner he was clutching like his life depended on it. This was his first deep space posting, but she could already tell he didn’t belong here.
“That’s what the instruments say. I said check!” Chief pointed to Herchel and flicked her finger sharply upward.
With hands shaking, Herschel flipped his headgear open and back. He was panting, sweating profusely, but not dying.
Chief opened her own rig. “Steady breaths, sailor.” She made her tone softer, more reassuring. “Good. Don’t think. The job is everything. Do your job.”
He looked back at her, his demeanor visibly calmer. “Cabin pressure feels normal, Chief.” Hershel paced the perimeter slowly. “I don’t hear any hissing, Chief. No smell of fresh combustion, but the air still stinks from scorched metal.”
“Get used to that,” Chief said.
On the other side of the compartment, Enzo and his team partner were using handheld instruments to read the temperature of the bulkheads, deck, and overhead as per Chief’s protocol. Headgear would snap back in place quickly if the pressure changed. It took way too long to get a glove on. “She’s cold, Chief, like Emi’s last date,” Enzo said. Always the joker.
“Chief,” Spaceman Second Class Emi Yasuda looked at her with painful shyness, as if she’d rather chew off her own arm than address her superior. “I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s good, sailor.” The guns were quiet. They had taken no more hits to the hull. “It’s good that we’re here to hear that nothing.” Battles in space never lasted long. It took very little time to kill a ship… or be killed.
Chief walked them through a second round of checks, this time focusing on less critical operating systems. This compartment was secure.
“Next!” she ordered.
***
“We went looking for those soulless insects, and we found them,” Captain Reynard D. Puck IV said, speaking in jingoistic slogans. He sounded like everyone back on Earth, including her sister who she didn’t miss, even after two years apart. There were no insects in space, just other humans looking for a fight.
Puck was a lieutenant commander, not even a full commander, which was the usual minimum to captain a ship this size. He was bound for glory, thanks to his family’s connections at FedCon Space Command. Also thanks to the untimely death of Captain Reece at the Battle of Delos Arcadia three weeks earlier. Untimely except for the fact that Puck and his supporters had goaded the captain into taking ever greater risks. Now that Puck was in charge, things had only gotten worse. They should have returned to the nearest base along with their damaged sister ship instead of pressing on alone. Puck, however, had things to prove to the upper brass.
“Two confirmed kills, Captain,” Puck’s provisional second-in-command reported. Lieutenant Helen Dodds was a competent officer, but she was not willing to caution the captain away from risky engagements. None of the command staff were. They were loyalists, captain first FedCon second, with the crew not making the list. “One was their capital ship, an Ares-class carrier. The other three vessels withdrew with heavy damage.”
They’d probably seen this as an easy victory: one FedCon heavy cruiser traveling alone. It was a mistake anyone could make… once. Still, the surviving ships would go and bring back help. Most likely, they had three maybe four weeks before the enemy returned in force. They needed a plan.
Staffers around the table made their reports orally, backing up written reports Puck had certainly not read. The NCOs stood in a cluster, calling out the specific repair estimates. Once or twice, she caught some of them eyeing a rack of weapons mounted on the nearby bulkhead. They were all too seasoned to make that mistake, but the temptation was certainly there.
As senior chief, she had drawn the plumb assignment and gave her assessment: “We need seventeen hull section plates. That new synthetics unit can provide almost anything, but there’s no material in the hoppers to render that much hide. We need plates, and without them, we can’t make a jump at full power. At minimal power, it would take eight months to hop to the nearest friendly port. It's even farther to any asteroid we might harvest for usable alloys.” She let that hang for a second.
“We don’t talk defeat aboard the Perun, Chief,” Captain Puck said dryly. “Your recommendation?”
“We could call for back-up and a tow…” Chief didn’t wait for his predictable response. “There is, however, System M-13Ώ4, about two weeks away under current conditions.”
“And why do we want to go to this star system, Chief?” the captain asked in genuine ignorance.
Dodds answered, “It’s the last known position of the Macha, sir. Crippled in the last war. When that war ended, salvage was given a low priority, and it never happened.”
“And?”
Chief jumped in. “Scavengers have gone there for years. Only a handful have ever come back. Those don’t talk much, but they say the crew abandoned her.”
“Macha’s crew must have transferred to the planet,” Puck surmised. “The atmosphere?”
Rankin, the head of the astro survey team, answered. “No full assessment available. We haven’t even gotten around to naming the planet. Reports list it as Grade-E, fiercely inhospitable.”
Chief added, “Scavengers won’t touch the place. They say it’s full of monsters.”
“Colorful,” said Puck.
Rankin said, “Unconfirmed, either way.”
Chief spoke again. “The scavenger I talked to says Macha is hanging off the fourth planet. Derelict. Should be plenty of hull plates for us.”
“Set course. Best possible speed. I want us there in two weeks!”
***
There were twenty of them. Too many for a run like this. As mission leader, a senior chief would ordinarily be aft with the empty-headed cherubs, trying to scare them enough to keep them alive. “One wrong step and you’re dead, sailor!” Ordinarily, she thought, I’d have a chance of bringing all of them back alive. She was bone-tired of this feeling, so she stayed in the long boat’s command cabin, keeping one eye on the pilot, a green lieutenant.
It was day three of the operation. Four sailors had gone MIA. No trace.
The drone tugs were peeling hull plating like the FCSC Macha were a luscious fruit. What was left of her. Macha had breached amidships with jagged bits twisted outwards testifying to the tremendous force of a direct hit on the main drive. By comparison, Perun’s battle wounds didn’t look as bad, two deep scars across her starboard side from just aft of Control nearly to the main drive. Nearly. Thirty-five hundred officers and sailors were still alive because something unthinkable nearly happened but did not.
Macha, goddess of war. Even crippled, she was terrifying – a Morrigan-class dreadnaught from the last war, an angry hulk looming over a hostile world. Of the eleven opposing ships in that conflict, only three limped home. The rest were floating in chunks scattered throughout the system. Macha had lost, but the crew had tucked her into a LaGrange point here to take their chances below. That was the last anyone had heard, then nothing for seven years.
The pilot called out. “Closing on port bay. Same as last run. She’s still got that damn debris field.” Scree traveling with the dead ship clacked off the long boat’s hull. They could avoid the big bits, but there were billions of sand-and-pebble-sized hazards out there.
“People?” Chief asked.
“Inconclusive. Wall of noise on scanners A through H. It’s gotta be residual energy from when the ship’s drive breached.”
A breach was not pretty. It would damage the ship, of course, but the radiation was worse. Within hours, anyone who wasn’t suited when it happened would be dead. It might take days or maybe weeks, as their cell walls liquified and collapsed, but it was a final judgement. No appeal.
What about the others? A breach takes time to build up. At least some of the crew would have had a chance to –
Chief cut off her own thoughts. “Activity? Motion of any kind?”
“No motion we can read. The seals check out; it’s breathable aboard but on the cold side. A few degrees above freezing. No heat signatures above that.”
They set down in the port landing bay as they’d done on each of the past trips. Four trips. They’d stolen anything they could possibly use, including food stores and weapons components. It was a feast! A trade-off. Four trips. Four missing sailors. Puck had clamped down on open chatter about the missing, but sailors were highly skilled at whispering gossip. They knew exactly who had vanished.
“Teams, form up. Get to your next assigned hull section –” Chief checked her roster “–port ventral minus six, sections 613 through 617.” They headed off, each team splitting off in turn. Chief told her people, “We’ll cut the mounts as before and let the drone tugs carry the plates back to Perun. You know your assignments. Eye contact at all times. No screw-ups, people!”
Chief took Emi, Herschel, the wiseass Enzo, and a dead-eyed sailor named Artem. Plate installation was designed to be permanent, but her teams carried plasma torches to convince the support structures otherwise. Macha drew them in through her brightly lit compartments and shadowy recesses. Their visors could compensate, but every time they moved into a new area, it took long moments for their retinas to adjust. That’s when their imagination played games. They could hear movement in the distance – the other teams reaching their assigned locations. Maybe. For its part, Macha made her own noises, as servos triggered behind bulkheads and ventilation systems dutifully roared to life at random intervals.
Enzo was the wildcard of the group. The astral navy frowned on body art, especially bio-lite glyphs. Enzo was covered neck-to-nuts in serpents, naked women, religious slogans, all of which lit up in the dark. His facial glyphs outshone the light in his headgear. Enzo was incapable of taking anything seriously, he reveled in the tension of the situation. He’d brought a pouch of bearings with him. Stepping around a frame joist into darkness, he tossed one into the void. The metal bearing skittered and bounced. “Oh, no! What’s that?”
“Idiot!” Emi cried, her face betraying genuine concern. “Why do you have to be like that – such a child?”
“You should have stayed home, sugar cheeks. Let the boys handle the fighting.”
“I wanted to. Every family has to contribute at least two members into the service. My older brother went. He died at Triton. Next, it came down to either me or my younger brother. He’s only fifteen, so I went. I was planning to go to college, but that’s on hold for now.”
“You wanted to be a doctor or lawyer?” Enzo chided.
“I will be a xenobotanist, after the war” Emi replied.
Enzo’s laughter rang out. “Don’t you watch the news? The Arch Council’s already talking shit about the Omicron Eridani Trade Group. There’s no after the war. There’s only this war and the next war and the next. Bye-bye buttercups. Oh, don’t cry. I’ll buy you a dozen roses and show you my shiny Anaconda, eh, sugar cheeks?”
Emi was pale.
Chief had had enough. “Call out!”
Each of the four sailors cried out their name in the designated order.
“Four present. Good. Enzo, since you’re obviously bored, you operate the torch.” First, Chief used her pistol, scorching the metal seam to trace out a precise guide for the far more powerful torch. Whoever operated the plasma tool would feel that heat, even through their suit. It was dangerous work, but Enzo had nominated himself. They moved into position.
“Headgear closed.” Four thumbs up. She closed her own. “Go!”
Enzo triggered the torch’s fury. It bit into the inner side of the hull, making a deep, clean incision. Even with their visors, the light was shockingly bright. A sudden, high-pitched whistle sounded, so loud their headgear filters had to block most of it, then everything went silent. They’d breached the hull and let out the atmosphere in this section of the Macha.
The work was difficult, performed in cramped quarters. Every action had to be checked and re-checked before they carried it out. Otherwise, they’d be throwing lives away. They moved from one cramped place to the next, making cuts over several hours. This gave the big drones outside a clear chance to make a few final snips and begin hauling away the thirty-ton plate.
Chief ordered, “Call out!”
Four sailors called out their names.
“Head back to the long boat.”
They rejoined the other teams in the landing bay, which still had atmosphere. Sailors opened their visors and traded nonsense stories of how they’d bravely carried out their work. Some began shoving each other in mock aggression. It was like watching a schoolyard at recess.
“Team leaders, have your teams call out!” Chief ordered.
Each team leader repeated the order in their assigned turn. Once that team finished, the team leaders called, “All present.”
Chief’s team went last. “Call out!” Three sailors answered.
***
“I take full responsibility, captain. Spaceman Artem Chumak was competent but inexperienced.” Senior Chief Petty Officer Freda Henry, FCSC stood in the captain’s mess with her back gun barrel straight. She kept her eyes on a colorful seal on the far bulkhead showing a god wielding an axe in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other. Perun. I ordered Specialist Lorenzo Herrera –”
“The walking porn screen?” Captain Puck asked, biting into his double bacon cheeseburger. Rare.
“Yes, I ordered Herrera to maintain eye contact at all times, however, I also ordered him to carry the plasma torch back to the long boat, which means I failed to –”
“Chief, shut up.” Captain Puck spoke with his mouth full, his lips dripping with ketchup.
“Yes, sir.”
“You lost a man. That stinks.” His Ss sprayed burger blood. “I’d like to know what happened to Chumak and the other missing sailors, but right now that’s secondary. Our primary mission is to repair the damage and get back in the fight. Thanks to that dreadnaught over there, we now have more firepower than any ship in the fleet. I’d like to use it on somebody.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dodds, who sat across the table, quietly eating a salad, spoke up. “Scanners are a hot mess, as you know. We’ve posted lookouts. One of them reports spotting a momentary glint.”
“A glint, sir?”
“A glint, Chief, about halfway between our current position alongside Macha and that nasty-ass planet out there. So, we turned our attention planetside, and what do you think we found?”
Chief looked to both officers, then finally hazarded, “I’m sure I don’t know either, sir.”
Dodds said, “No, you don’t. We don’t know and you don’t know. We found an odd reading. Might be a power source and some refined metal, but we can’t quite tell through all the interference. So, we sent down a scout drone. And do you know what we found then?”
“No, sir. I don’t know.”
“No, you don’t know that either because something destroyed that drone. Would you like to see the something that did it?”
Uncomfortable at being led, Chief was nonetheless curious as hell. “Yes, sir.”
“This is the last visual we got back, about an hour ago.” Captain Puck gnawed on his rare meat while Dodds punched up an image and showed Chief the last moments of the drone’s existence. The scene floated between them, showing a large moving object, creature, rising up above the tops of dense purplish-green foliage. Its face, if that was a face, carried thick armored scales. Its snout was blunt, with a central beak-like shape. There was no sign of a body through the undergrowth, but the neck was impressive.
“A dragon,” Chief said.
“Fire-breathing variety,” Captain Puck said, or rather sprayed.
The dragon, or whatever, opened its maw, exposing shark-like rows of teeth. It did not belch flame, but rather neck pouches on either side of its jaw swelled up and its head jerked. At that moment, the drone went dark. The picture and all telemetry ended in an instant.
“Sonics, we think. Whatever that thing is, it took out a shielded scout drone.”
“Impressive.”
“Which is why you’ll want to take full precautions when you and your team go in to investigate, Chief.”
Lieutenant Dodds stopped Chief in the corridor afterwards. “You should have fried Herrera’s neon ass to a crispy brown. You play mother hen to these chicks, Freda. They don’t know how lucky they are. Just don’t forget to cover your own ass.”
“Aye, sir.” Good advice. She’d try to take it.
***
They had thirty hours on the surface. Chief had requested Emi, Herschel, and Enzo not be assigned to this mission, but Dodds felt they owed something for losing Artem. Or maybe she thought this duty would allow them to pay penance. Sometimes people needed punishment, even when they weren’t actually at fault, so they could get on with their lives. Dodds understood sailors. Chief wished Dodds were their captain… then she mentally kicked herself for having such thoughts.
The skiff was smaller than a long boat and held only Chief, the other three, two gunner’s mates, and the pilot. They landed in a clearing within two miles of the power signature they’d detected from Perun. The pilot immediately lifted off, promising to observe from orbit and return for the other six at the designated time.
“What are we hoping to find, Chief?” Emi asked.
“Me? I’m hoping we don’t find a damned thing.”
The planet was a living contradiction. It was cool, chilly even, yet the vegetation resembled tropical growth, except for the color. The sky was pink, the air thick, sticky. A few of them opted to keep their headgear closed.
They began walking, stepping into dense purple-green growth. They couldn’t pick out any birds perched in the canopy, but through breaks overhead they spotted a vast flock (school?) of manta-shaped things lazily flagellating their bodies in the cool, dense air. They'd occasionally pass a sprig of outrageously-colored flowers, their blooms opening and closing slowly, at the edge of perception.
“I wish we could leave places like this alone,” Herschel said, dropping his usual stiffness. “If we ever stop killing each other long enough, people will come to worlds like this.”
“It’ll make a decent base or colony, if we can kill off those dragons,” said Gunner’s Mate Mateo Silva. “I’d like to see one up close.” As he said it, he hoisted his weapon, a heavy-duty houchong, almost as powerful as the enemy guns that had wounded Perun.
Hershel made a face. “That’s exactly what I mean. We come to worlds we don’t understand ready to blast anything that moves.”
As if to underscore that point, the other gunners mate, Nick Waltham, called out. “Five o’clock!” Before Chief could even turn to look, Waltham’s houchong was firing, chopping up the trees, turning purple-green fronds and heavy bladders to mushy shreds.
“Waltham. Report.”
“I thought I saw something about two hundred yards off.”
“Something?”
“Not sure, maybe a dragon, a small one.” He grinned sheepishly. “It was moving.”
Chief checked her scanner. “Well, nothing’s moving now.”
“Yes, Chief.” Nick Waltham sounded pleased with himself.
She kept scanning, slowly turning her body. “I’m reading two more of those dragons out there, maybe a mile or so. Not moving for now.”
It took half an hour for the natural audioscape to return. The air was thick with fat things buzzing by their heads. Looking closely at the trees, Chief began to spot some of these bugs clinging to limbs. Even when she brushed a frond, the hairy bugs clung on silently. Things unseen scurried or slithered beneath low growth plants. There were, however, few cries of aggression or amour. This nauseatingly palleted jungle liked to keep its business secret.
An oily rain fell until they were all drenched, then quit as quickly as it had begun. Now, they all smelled like natives.
Reaching the edge of a stagnant pool, they found small animals mulling about. Mostly, the various beasts sat contentedly upon a spot like they were nesting. Occasionally, fat bugs delivered themselves to the beasts, lighting on a paw only to be casually devoured without protest on the bugs’ part. If a human got too close, then the beasts scurried off. These creatures were nothing remarkable, most of them cat-like except for a few extra joints, a dorsal fin, and an array of wriggling filaments springing from their undersides. These resembled colorful threads hanging out of a granny’s yarn basket. The feature made the cats less pettable. The trees had a mix of oddly-shaped fronds and brighter-colored bladders that hung down like fruit. They moved cautiously, unsure what else was hiding underfoot.
Emi took samples as she went. “I want more of these, Chief. Many more. The cells – this – it’s different. New.”
“We’re not here for the plants, sailor. Take your samples, but keep your eyes up. Don’t get lost in your work.” Chief kept her tone gentle. Emi was trying to get back to her passion for xenobotany. That is, if these purple plants qualified as... plants.
“It stinks down here, Chief.” Enzo. Always with the comments. “Bad.”
Nick spoke up. “It’s getting worse. I think we should veer east.”
“Agreed,” Chief acknowledged, spreading a pungent balm on her lip below her nose.
They covered the rest of the distance in silence. At last, they came upon the site they’d plotted from orbit. It showed signs of having been a temporary settlement, very small. Someone made it to the planet. Didn't last long here. Their handheld scanners confirmed the presence of refined metal, but there wasn’t much of anything to be found in these collapsed shacks. And no power. They methodically paced the immediate area in a grid formation.
Chief looked over and found Emi squatting down, holding out one ungloved hand. Chief was about to scold Emi when she realized what the sailor was trying to do. One of the local cats was coming closer, sniffing at Emi’s hand. It was a pleasant scene in an unreal setting. The cat’s violet eyes narrowed, and its tongue darted out several inches like a snake sensing its way along.
Enzo was nearby. He stepped over to join Emi. “Here, puss puss.” The cat-thing tensed and leapt away, springing a good six feet in one bound, tearing filaments free of tentative contact with the earth. When it landed, it immediately plopped its body down into the thick foliage. The creature’s belly threads rustled below it and burrowed in. The cat took on a contented expression, closing its eyes and emitting a low humming.
Emi remained kneeling, her eyes still on the cat. “I think they connect with the plant life here, Chief. We’ve never seen a lifeform that could bridge plant and animal, but the native life here is unique. We have to study it.”
This time, Chief knelt by Emi and put her hand on the sailor’s shoulder. “I wish I could give you that chance. I really do. We’re here to find answers. We’ve got missing people and traces of something hidden. We can’t get distracted by –” Enzo was looking on, his glyphs glowing faintly in the late afternoon light. The two GMs were standing a few feet away, also looking on.
Chief stood up. “Shit. Herschel! Sound off.” No answer.
An hour later, the sun was getting low, and they’d found no sign of their missing sailor.
***
“Can’t we just leave?” Emi was pleading with her. In truth, that’s exactly what Chief wanted to do, but she shook her head nonetheless.
Nick and Mateo set up the camp, such as it was. Nick pulled a long cannister from his rig and tapped one end. Out sprang a closed hemisphere of dense carbon fiber over a semi-rigid frame. Enzo drew his sidearm and used it to set a sloppy pile of foliage aflame. Unsurprisingly, it kicked out far more oily smoke and stink than light. Fortunately, he’d cleared the immediate area so they didn’t set the whole jungle alight.
“Just something to keep the neighbors away,” he explained. Dozens of cats and a few of the larger animals were gathering around the campsite, but the fire held them back several dozen yards.
Home. Emi and Chief unpacked the hot-serve tins, setting it on a blanket, picnic style. Mateo ate standing up while the others popped open the steaming tins.
Enzo stared down at his dinner. “Meat hash.” The sailors had their own ideas as to what the Quartermaster Corps considered meat.
“All of them?” Nick asked. “They can’t all be meat hash.”
“Oh yes, they can.” Thank the space gods for Emi. She was the only one brave enough, or scared enough, to make a terrible pun.
“Well, the bugs love it.” Mateo was masterfully contorting himself in order to cover his tin while eating, all without lowering his houchong or taking his eyes off the perimeter. The bugs were in fact swarming the food. Try as they might, the little monsters – neither quite insect nor mammal – found their way into the hash. They each managed a few bites before caution and revulsion cut the meal short.
“We’ve got about forty-five minutes until it gets dark,” Nick said, looking from his scanner to the treeline. “I’m picking up something in that direction. It’s… too close.” He began walking toward a particularly uninviting patch of jungle.
Chief was on her feet. “What are you up to? I don’t give you permission to leave camp.”
He never looked back as he answered. “The captain ordered GM Silva and me to keep you others safe. This is a threat.”
“I’ll go with you!” Before she could object, Enzo was off, catching up with Mateo.
“Comms on!” she ordered. Chasing them would have created more trouble. Shooting Enzo would have felt good but been hard to explain in her after action report.
Nick launched a pilot fish, the tiny drone’s signal immediately lighting up Chief’s scanner. She adjusted the image to hover above the device so that Mateo and Emi could see. Even with stabilizers, the view became confusing as soon as they crossed into the dense foliage.
Enzo and Nick traded jokes about what kind of trophy they’d bring back. “From what I’m reading, we’ll be lucky to get one claw on the boat.” Laughter somehow sounded unnatural in that jungle.
Chief called in on comms, “Move your flying fish forward. Scout ahead.”
“We’re fine, Chief. We can already hear the thing breathing. By the way, this is the source of the stink we all smelled earlier. These things are foul.”
Everything on this planet stank. This whole mission stank. They’d burned up their first day and discovered nothing.
“Holy shit!” the comms sounded. “Look at that thing! It’s legs are like trees. Those are trees. The legs are trees! Shit.” Enzo and Nick were excitedly talking over each other like teens sharing their first beer.
“Waltham, report!” Chief screamed.
Enzo’s face came into the floating image. “It’s coming at us, Chief. Taking defensive measures.” He sounded thrilled rather than afraid.
Before Chief could speak, the image flared with the power of Waltham’s houchong. Things got confusing quickly. The flying fish was too close to Waltham and set for close-ups; he hadn’t bothered to adjust it to a wide angle. Chief could see the two sailors grinning like idiots, cheering their victory. Then, suddenly, their expressions changed to amazement… and then to fear.
“Move!” Enzo shouted. He was already running.
The flying fish showed Waltham standing his ground, raising his houchong again, but he never got off the second shot. A shadow spread over him, then the flying fish moved off – why wasn’t clear, although its programming might include a few lines for self-preservation. Waltham wasn’t as smart. An instant later the transmission captured an impossibly loud noise similar to the one the scout drone had sent back to the Perun. The jungle exploded, literally. Fronds shredded, and every hanging purple-green bladder burst like squashed grapes.
Juice spattered the flying fish’s optical, which was a good thing. From what they could tell, that sonic blast had stripped away all of the flesh from Waltham’s upper body. Even as his gore-soaked skeleton began to topple, a giant maw reached down and engulfed him. The thing was faster than one might expect. A second blurry thrust captured the flying fish as well.
The image back in camp darkened. For a few more moments, it transmitted dim movement and a gurgling noise – the flying fish was being swallowed along with Waltham’s remains – then the image cut out.
***
Enzo’s and Mateo’s eyes glossily reflected the giant moon rising in the west. They acted dazed, either from what they’d just seen, or from the max dosage of stims Chief had ordered them to take, or both. They’d stand guard through the night. She’d consider relieving at least one of them, depending on how she felt after a few hours’ sleep. She and Emi made themselves as comfortable as possible in the tent shelter.
Emi dropped off in minutes, bless her, breathing softly as she lay against Chief’s side. It was like having a daughter.
And there, she’d done it. That was a whole bag of snakes she managed to open at the worst possible times. She’d made her choices. Glenn had certainly wanted marriage, children, a house in the country. She didn’t feel committed to the service, and she’d long since passed her mandatory term. So, why had she not taken that plunge instead of re-upping time and again. She was nearly too old for – She knew why. Earth was no place for kids. It was strangely easier to mind the oversized children on a ship than it would be to watch her own back on Earth. What a hell-hole they’d made of the place.
Her head spun for a couple of hours. She willed her thoughts to stop, but her brain had a mind of its own.
She wasn’t exactly sure when – the two sentries called out hourly like olde time towne criers – but eventually, she dropped into a cool, deep nothing. Paradise.
Freda found herself on a tropical island. Normal, green palm trees like the ones she remembered from vacations long ago. Here, days would come and go without worry. Just sea and sinking sand. A light breeze. Colorful birds. The rolling surf. The sinking to her right side. A dolphin jumping in the waves. The sand collapsing to her right. More waves.
“Emi!”
Chief was moving before she came fully awake, doing several things at once.
“Mateo! Enzo! Get in here!” Chief screamed even as she rolled over to her right. Her voice triggered tiny lights worked into the fabric of the shelter and she got a look at what had awakened her.
Emi was sinking through the bottom of the tent. Something had violated the densely-woven fibers. Chief’s eyes recovered from the shock of the sudden lighting to see threads running up from the ground. They were working their way over Emi’s face, up her nose. More were finding gaps in her suit – that shouldn’t be possible. The little tendrils were sending out tendrils of their own, even thinner, almost invisible. All of this was going on without disturbing Emi’s slumber.
She was sinking fast into the ground below. Even as the two men came through the shelter’s opening, Enzo’s facial glyphs blazing in terror, Chief hugged herself tightly against Emi’s prone body.
An instant later, the two of them were deep inside the soft, warm earth.
***
Enzo’s desperate screams were coming from above her, but they were already dim and distant.
The threads probed Chief, seeking out her openings. They weren’t painful, more of a tickle. They were getting into her, connecting, transmitting some sort of chemical or electrical message to her nervous system to relax. She was glad of that. Being buried alive was not pleasant. By rights, she ought to have been hysterical with panic, but she wasn’t. In fact, she was enjoying the sensation of being held in the planet’s protective womb.
Now she slept. She went back to her tropical island. The birds were lovely and the waves stretched out forever. Emi was sleeping by her side on the beach, smiling.
***
Chief was awake and not awake. Her senses were Tapatio 110-level fuzzy.
Emi was a few feet down the tunnel. They were in a tunnel with metal bracings. She could see. One thought at a time. The tunnels appeared to branch off just past where Emi was standing. The tunnel walls gave off a mid-range purple-hued light. The walls were alive.
The tunnel walls shuddered and rang from a terrible pounding. Bits of stone pelted her head. Enzo and Mateo must be trying to dig their way down to her, using the houchong. Must be making quite a mess.
So hard to focus.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Easy for you to say. Some of us aren’t used to being buried alive.
“It could not be helped.”
She looked at Emi. Her eyes were open, and she was smiling, but her lips were not moving. She turned in the opposite direction. The tunnel widened considerably, enough to hold a large group of people. She saw Herschel and Artem and other crewmen who’d vanished. There were others there, too, dressed in crude, woven clothing.
“Which one of you –” Her own voice startled her. The conversation before had been between a voice and her thoughts. “Who are you?”
“I’m Arlen Spencer, former third officer of the FCSC Macha.” His hand swept back. In the distance, the passage opened to a sizeable cavern. Chief could vaguely make out the silhouettes of large buildings against the illuminated cave walls, no doubt built using girders and other metal salvaged from their crippled ship. “Welcome to Innovu, short for initium novum.”
“New beginning.”
“You know your latin, Freda,” said Lt. Commander Spencer. He had the bearing of an officer, if not the chill fierceness of one. There was a kindness to his eyes that had no business on a warrior.
“Is this all of you?” Chief asked.
“No, not all. We have a home here, community.” He motioned with his head back at the darkened city.
“You’ve been here seven years. You might have rebuilt your main drive in that amount of time. You could have made it home.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Innovu has few refinable metals at strata we can reach. We occasionally return to Macha to strip what we can. Beyond that, we’ve allowed the planet to reshape us to conditions here. It feeds us.” Spencer indicated threads trailing off his abdomen.
Emi came closer. Threads were also dancing between her and her surroundings, snapping free from the tunnel wall only to reach out and rejoin some hidden network once she stopped moving.
“This is home for them. For us.”
Spencer raised one hand. “You know about the battle that crippled our ship. It was only one in a long series of engagements. We killed every ship we encountered. No quarter. No prisoners. Fear was the mission of our dreadnaught, and we performed our duty well.
“There came a time when we grew tired of the killing. I think you can understand. FedCon Space Command certainly would not. We requested rotation for the crew. They refused. Ordered us to seek out more targets. More lives to extinguish. Our final battle took us here to System M-13Ώ4. We did our duty, but when it was over, we found that we were badly damaged. Our captain and most of the senior staff were dead. It was our end as a fighting force.
“We’ve chosen to live apart from the endless wars of Earth. We built a life. Homes. Children. We could expand… if we had more to work with. Unlike your ship, Macha was not outfitted to build anything, only to destroy. We’ve stripped all we can from her, but…
“In any case, a month ago, our long-range scanners detected your battle. We evacuated our city, powered it down. We sent teams – maybe more seasoned than yours, better trained at stealth. We assessed your sailors and brought some of them here. All of us wish to remain, I assure you. We've been to the dance. We're happy to be wallflowers.
“While your ship remains here, we are quite capable of living in these tunnels – they were our first home on Innovu. We ‘live off the land,’ literally.”
“These threads.”
Spencer smiled. “Short-lived organisms, highly mobile go-betweens connecting one lifeform to another, a gift from Innovu, our living home. We’ve entered a symbiotic relationship with the planet… like the puff dragons.”
“Is that what you call them?”
“They’re harmless. Truly. By the time they reach such impressive size, they are quite literally rooted into the earth.”
Chief drew in a sharp breath, remembering. “The legs are trees. They are, aren’t they?”
“Yes. And it would have ignored your men – that’s not how it gets nourishment – but they attacked it, wounded it. Violence caught it by surprise. It… reacted.
“Life is far more cooperative here on Innovu than on Earth. It’s a good life. We’ve observed your sailors, choosing to contact only the ones who don’t fit well in a warlike society. Humans adapt quickly. In a few generations, we may sprout threads from our own bellies. It’s not a bad life, actually. No fighting. Very little predation. As close to harmony as humans are likely to find. Freda, we’d like can you to join us.”
Emi turned to her. “Please.”
“My captain already has a mystery. Fleet Command can’t ignore this many missing people.”
Emi was gentle but firm. “I want to stay, Freda.” Of course. It was a xenobotanist’s dream.
“Me, too, Chief,” Herschel was almost sobbing. This was no killer. No one in that tunnel bore the cold stare of so many others on Earth and aboard her warships.
The walls of the tunnel shook with the latest houchong blast from the two frightened men above.
“You two stay. Someone needs to go back and tell a story, unless you want some very unpleasant company.”
They stood for a moment. She wanted to kick herself, but, in truth, these kids were safe. Someone had to look after the ones on Perun.
“I respect your choice,” said Spencer. “Someday, I hope you’ll return to us.”
“I’d like that.”
“We haven’t much time. Your two friends on the surface are making a very large hole. Before we send you back, however, let me show you some of what we’ve been able to build down here.”
He led her towards the cavern and the city it contained.
***
Chief spit dirt under the pinkish sky. “What are you looking at?” she yelled at Enzo and Mateo.
“We’ve been digging for hours. I’d given up hope,” Mateo said, helping Chief up through the soil and out of the enormous pit. “The skiff is on its way. Should be here in about twenty minutes.”
Enzo glanced behind Chief, but whatever passage she’d come through had already caved in.
“Good,” she said.
The two haggard men looked at each other then back to her. Enzo asked, “Chief, aren’t you going to tell us what happened to you? Where’s Emi?”
She looked up. A pinprick of light was moving in the morning sky. The skiff. Finally, Chief said, “My report is for Captain Puck.”
They traveled back to Perun in silence.
***
“And you saw nothing while you were underground?” Captain Curlin demanded.
The interrogation room was warmer than the planet, but Chief felt cold. Not to mention oily and rank. Still covered in the planet’s crud, she stood before the captain and first officer, who sat there grim-faced. Behind them were the brig’s holding cells, a not-so-subtle reminder that these officers were in no mood for games.
She willed her face to remain neutral and her breathing steady. “Just empty tunnels, captain.” It wasn’t the first time Chief had lied to an officer. It took skill. She almost added ‘very extensive, heading off in all directions’ then caught herself. Every bit of elaboration was another chance for the whole thing to unravel. Keep your lie simple.
Lieutenant Dodds asked the next question. “It’s your impression that your missing sailors are dead?”
The word ‘your’ struck home. She tried to add just the right suppressed grief. “Yes, sir.”
Captain Puck fidgeted with the screen in his hands. It replayed the death of Waltham and scenes of Enzo and Mateo firing into the earth, trying to dig their way to her and Emi. He looked her directly in the eye. “That still doesn’t explain the sailors who went missing while salvaging materials from the Macha.”
“I’m at a loss, sir… but… from what we saw on the planet, there are creatures who might have gotten aboard… somehow…”
“Somehow,” Puck echoed.
Dodds cleared her throat. “It’s possible the crew of the Macha made several trips while evacuating, inadvertently bringing something back from the planet, a juvenile or an egg or something. It’s possible that thing has survived aboard the ship and preys on whatever it can find.”
“Survived for seven years?” Clearly, Puck was not buying it.
“It’s just a theory, captain, but it fits the facts.”
Puck splayed his fingers flat on the table. “Well, I have another theory. I theorize these sailors saw their chance and deserted my ship. Maybe they found survivors from the Macha and decided to try their luck on the planet. What do you think of my theory, Chief?”
“I don’t… know.” Chief felt the bulkheads pressing in on her.
Dodds spoke up. “I’ll order tactical teams, sir. We’ll comb the landing zone and find those tunnels. We should be able to flush out the deserters, ours and the Macha sailors. Assuming the tunnels are as extensive as Chief Henry says, we should be able to get them in less than five, maybe six months. Although, that may give some of them time to escape. We’ll also send more scout drones and additional patrols. These bastards can’t evade us forever. We’ll find them… eventually. Does the captain wish them captured or killed on sight?”
Puck stared at his executive officer. “I have a war to fight. How many months in ‘eventually,’ Lieutenant Dodds?”
Bless you, Helen! I owe you enough Tapatio 110 to knock out the fleet. Chief jumped in. “If what we’re discussing is true, there is another possible course of action. We could drop some cargo pods full of construction supplies and a recorded order to build a base.”
Dodds was on it. “That would allow them the chance to remain loyal. FedCon Command can always send a ship after the war to deal with the deserters as they see fit.”
“That could take years,” Captain Puck said.
It could be forever, Chief thought, if our old enemy intercepts us en route back to base, or if we get sent out to fight in an endless series of battles. “Yes, sir. A bad plan. My mistake.” Chief remained rigid.
Puck eyed her closely.
Dodds spoke up again. “Dropping pods is quick. And… it saves the captain the embarrassment of reporting a desertion from your command, sir. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve stationed a small party of loyal sailors to tame that planet of beasts. If a future captain arrives and finds those people down there are no longer loyal, that’s a whole separate situation. Doesn’t reflect on us. We’ll keep it quiet of course to discourage further… volunteerism among the crew.”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I meant, captain, sir,” Chief said.
“Good thinking, Chief. Get the drop prepared. We get underway at zero ten-thirty hours.”
Heading to her work station, resisting a powerful urge to stop for a shower, Chief considered things anew. Emi and the others were safe, at least for the foreseeable future. Perun’s scanners had picked up movement at extreme range, undoubtedly unfriend, lined up between them and home. Earth, fount of all the wars man had ever fought… and all his wars to come. She envied Emi her new world, and she was grateful to Dodds for helping her protect the children of Innovu.
Chief reached the duty station. They needed to gather tons of supplies, clothing, medicines, computer upgrades, and more from storage holds all over the ship, then load and secure the pods for drop. Messy grunt work to be done on the double. She looked around the bay at all the expectant faces. She knew their names. These sailors had seen battle, but they were still young. They needed guidance, discipline, love, if they were going to survive.
Fine, Freda thought. I’m a mother hen. “Listen up, people. In five hours we will load two pods using eight bots and your eight backs, with zero breaks and zero screw-ups! Questions? No? Good. Let’s move!” Cluck. Cluck.
###
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