On the ill-fated ninth voyage we had loaded up with seeds at AgriPrime 9 and were headed to Sector 34 where we would dump the whole cargo into the planets gravity well. The seed pods would heat up and burst emitting a fine dust of seeds. In no time at the entire planet would be covered in beautiful purple plants that would grow and reproduce at an accelerated speed.
Perfect!
There had been several mild hunger panics giving rise to feeding frenzies on some of our minor habitation planets because of an unforeseen, but inevitable jump in population numbers. The Honourable Growers could do nothing about this because The Great Maker had given the Agri race the divine right to reproduce unfettered and spread throughout the Great Darkness that existed for our race alone!
Praise be to The Great Maker!
During the long months of my ninth and last voyage we ran the engines at full throttle as we struggled to overcome the inertia of thousands of tons of cargo and reach light speed where the ordinary laws of physics would not matter and we would then accelerate at will. Until that point there wasn’t much to do except listen to the constant roar of the engines reverberating throughout every bulkhead.
The boredom was only intermittently broken when we rushed to the viewing galleries to patriotically watch fleets of Agri warships heading into the Great Darkness at the perimeter of the empire. News from the outer reaches of the empire was sparse but padded sumptuously by rumours, from the unbelievable ‘invasion of another sentient race’ to the ridiculous ‘Infestations that had managed to leave their planets’.
The Honourable Growers on AgriPrime 1 at the centre of the empire had decreed in law and religion that we were the only sentient race in the galaxy. To disagree was tantamount to heresy of the worst kind, career and life limiting if you were caught. Most sensible Agris accepted this and did not argue.
The very last time warships passed by my navigation panel lit up as their scanners painted and identified us. Like ‘first-trippers’ on their first voyage into space, we ooh’d and ah’d at the massive vessels bristling with torpedoes and cannon.
It had taken me many years to attain my position, because I did not hail from a reputable nest and because of this I was very diligent. I like to think that I never made any mistakes in the plotting and maintenance of our courses to and fro from the food planets then back to the population planets that teemed with the Agri race. The empire wasn’t as large as it used to be in olden times, but there were still trillions and trillions of Agris. Occasionally I would be called to attend the updating of a particular electronic chart because, for undisclosed reasons a particular sector was closed by order of the navy.
Once the warships had disappeared we fell back into our dull routine and the lack of alertness that goes with it. Later that fateful day, on my second watch that mirrored the midnight to mid morning time of AgriPrime 1 central planet, I scanned the star charts for the local area we were approaching. An asteroid field lay in our path and was denoted on the charts as semi dense but passable at our present low speed. Also nearby was a minor planet deemed not worthy of sowing due to numerous hotspots of irradiated soil and some residual nuclear radiation that would make harvesting more trouble than it was worth! I never thought to question what had created the irradiation because the Honourable Growers forbid it.
Slowly we nosed our way amongst the inconsequential asteroids pushing them aside with our reinforced front bulkhead. I had just rechecked our course that would avoid all large rocks when I sensed something wrong ahead of us but not visible. It was on such occasions as this that I thanked the Great Maker who had given all Agris the ability to receive radiations for the entire electromagnetic spectrum. For a lucky few it was rumoured that they could also see other things within The Great Darkness we called outer space.
I became alert and raced towards the forward viewer.
Nothing.
For some reason I turned on the side viewers. It was then that I saw them! Lots of them!
The strange creatures flew from the cover of the floating rubble and towards our craft from all directions except forward. They were very odd in appearance, all a light grey in colour and with a central body with five appendages, four of which they dexterously used to manipulate strange devices.
As our action station alarms began to sound I perceived that the creatures had quickly reached the airlocks and the rear of our vessel where the main Towing Frame was attached. I released an emergency mayday, but I knew that our navy ships were too far away for it to do any good. As it turned out what we should have done was blow the main coupling, abandoning the cargo and allowed the full power to the engines to thrust us away. The alien creatures would have fallen off our hull and only our Captain would have been executed by the Honourable Growers!
But we didn’t do anything of the kind.
The ship leaped forward momentarily as an explosion severed our link with the Towing Frame and at the same time the engine alarms began to blare as their thrust faltered. We heard the sound of smaller explosions transmitted through the fuselage of the ship and the engines shut off abruptly with grinding jolts, their rotors irretrievably damaged.
My instruments told me that the Towing Frame was beginning to slow and come under the influence of the gravity well of the nearby planet. If we did not rectify the situation the cargo would be lost and many Agris would suffer the dreadful pangs of hunger! We drifted in momentary silence on backup power and then the unknown creatures recommenced their boarding of our vessel.
Momentarily our small crew was stunned by the realization that we, the Agri race were not the only sentient creatures in the galaxy, for what else could attack a space faring vessel? The Honourable Growers at the pinnacle of our society had lied to us and we accepted their lies because the food kept appearing! Now we few were to pay the price! Our crew consisted of the six of us in the control room with another four in each of the four engine controller pods that were mounted atop each engine. Grimly, we realized that the sixteen engine Agris were all ended.
There was nowhere for us to hide! We gathered together, the Captain if front, all our stingers ready, we didn’t have as much as a pistol between us because we were on a merchant vessel.
The bulkhead door flew open and our stingers flew towards it and the creature that stood there. Six stingers landed to no effect! From a silver box on its body, the voice of the creature said, “Stand down and you will not be hurt,”
The Captain went to sting again when the creature raised a stick he held in one appendage. The noise was appalling in our dense atmosphere and the Captain literally flew apart as metal projectiles entered his body and created small detonations.
We hovered in the air amongst the remains of the Captain, shocked. It was the first time I had seen a murder. Three more of the creatures entered the control room, ignored us and pored over our equipment with which they seemed very familiar. Soon our ship was turned around using the small manoeuvring attitude jets and with that movement our sensitive eyestrips felt the gravity well and the imperceptible beginnings of a fall towards the nearby planet.
But the horror was not to end! It then became obvious that the alien was wearing an outlandish type of space suit, impervious to most things, especially our stingers. It lifted its upper appendages and with a few deft movements released what was a helmet and we looked upon a ghastly sight that would give me sleeping period disturbance for many days!
A whitish skinned slug-like creature looked back. It appeared to have two inefficient ocular recesses, two equally inefficient aural inputs at the side of its globe and most revolting of all, a front mounted air intake and exhaust recess through which it simultaneously breathed and spoke! It was so primitive a creature it even had fur sprouting from the upper surface of its globe!
The air intake recess issued unintelligible squeals and the silver box in its chest issued forth in the Agri language in the correct frequency, “I’m a Major in Earth’s long range Attack Force. Our job is to disrupt any and all operation
s of the Agri race of genocidal murderers.”
‘Genocidal murderers’, we five survivors took this falsehood badly because we knew it could not be true! The concept was ludicrous. We were masters of the sentient universe the Honourable Growers of AgriPrime had drummed it into us all of our lives. Suddenly I took it upon myself to rotate my eyestrip slowly to absorb all available information accessible in the electromagnetic spectrum. I could not read the ugly creature’s mind, but would conclude its motivations and intentions.
The Major watched me rotating and I was further surprised that he knew what I was doing! He smiled an ugly toothy smile and suddenly I beheld the truth behind the feigned good humour; I glimpsed a starving child, who had been the adolescent Major, standing amongst the rubble of his city, his parents and siblings gone. Large ugly purple plants had destroyed the primitive society in which he had lived and resulted in the death of countless millions. I looked closer at the mind image and was deeply shocked. The ugly purple plants were none other than the Agri food plants that we had seeded many worlds with! From the creature’s perspective the evil plants punched their way through concrete and humans and into the sky until they were half a mile high, mature and laden with alien fruit!
I was then more surprised and appalled at my lifelong naivety. It had never occurred to me that there might be other races on the planets we seeded for food. That they deserved an equal chance of life as the Agri race was an alien concept that I still cannot to this day come to terms with. What I received from the Major was the sense of a life lived desperately at its beginning then in the constant pain and loss of eternal combat. But underlying his strong sense of duty, I sensed an honourable creature that would not kill us unnecessarily but was still motivated by a terrible purpose, the total destruction of the Agri ability to expand into space! Surely he must have realized that if we were confined to one planet trillions of us would perish!
The cabin rumbled as the alien creatures activated the ships attitude thrusters again, now that the main engines were ruined. Our vessel turned about and we beheld the massive towing frame entering the atmosphere of the nearby planet. Flares of light erupted as the heat of re-entry melted the stout framework like ice water. Suddenly the frame flew apart into myriad flaming pieces and released thousands of tons of seeds pods into the atmosphere. I nearly retched with disappointment at the waste of so much food and the starvation that it would create.
“Shows over,” the Major said, “You will proceed to your lifeboat now! Or of course you could stay here and burn up.”
We remaining five looked at each other in horror. It used to be entertaining to read of castaways on alien worlds but the reality was that very few survivors of a mishap in space ever reached a planet’s surface, let alone were rescued. The Great Darkness is indeed Great and very dangerous!
The two younger Agris, the cadets, wailed with fear as we entered our lifeboat. The aliens quickly closed the ejection doors and released the small craft abruptly without systems checks or pressurization. We felt the locking arms grind against the hull as they moved to release, then we lost gravity. An eerie silence ensued during which we secured ourselves against the bulkheads. It began to get warm and the roar of re-entry began that filled me with fear in case the onboard computer was defective and we would boil slowly like the purple fruit in boiling water we were so fond of. I glanced through the access port window to see our beloved ship, the ‘Kinta V’ as it began to tumble and be buffeted by the atmosphere. External antenna melted in an incandescent flashes, then the damaged engine pods tore loose and began to break up to supply their own differently coloured molten light. I did not tell my companions who had enough to think about, but I could have manifested sadness by allowing water to run from my eye strip.
I shut my eyestrip down and in the internal darkness of my soul I prayed to the Great Maker for survival.
The planet Trefalandia. Sector 12 Agri Empire.
The Trefas were nomadic people. Indeed they had to be due to poor vegetation resulting from a long ago nuclear war that no one remembered. Vill lay on his back in the dusty grass at the brow of a low hill that was itself in the middle of a small valley, just a little higher than the walls that protected the tribe’s encampment from the cold winds. His stomach rumbled with hunger but he was not perturbed because had never known any different. The sheep lay silent nearby in the dark, a few dozen in number but easily looked after by the thin almost gaunt youth. He pushed his greenish tinted fingers over his skull and through his green head fronds that to a denizen of a certain blue planet would resemble a collection of small snakes. He was trying to remain alert, but he was of course underfed and his eyes were heavy and beginning to close. Suddenly light flared through his heavy eyelids and began to grow in brilliance.
A bolt of fear coursed through him! For a moment he thought he had fallen asleep and the sheep had scattered. For that mistake the tribe would take his life or at the very least cast him out to wander alone without the guidance or experience to avoid the hotspots. That would mean certain Death!
Looking up he saw that it was still night and there was a star at the zenith that was pulsing and becoming brighter as it came closer to the planet. It was one of his beloved metal birds! He heard the sound behind him of running feet and it was the tribe, all fifty of them pounding up the hill, even the Old Ones who were weak with the ever present hunger. Sadly he thought that not so long ago, in his younger days the tribe had numbered nearly a hundred, but if food was scarce the oldies didn’t last long.
“Was this what the Old Ones saw when the nuclear missiles descended towards them?” he thought and then detected a low rumble growing louder. The silver bird grew so bright it was painful to look at directly and the faint sound had grown into a descending howl. The sheep began to move nervously and Vill tried to reassure them. Suddenly the sky was filled with the brilliant silver cascades of burning metals and he heard a subdued ‘Whoompf!” far away. The tribal group ‘oohed’ and ‘aahd’.
Gradually the light began to fade behind a cloud of purple dust that seemed to be drifting heavily downwards, but far away. The light went out and silence returned. The sheep also went quiet as if nothing had happened but Vill stayed alert, fearful. The crowd slowly wandered back down to the crude group of tents they shared, muttering to Vill various versions of “Good Night, boy” and from Asher, the Headman, “Keep a good eye on them sheep.”
At dawn Vill watched the sunrise the same as it always had but it was not a normal yellow sunrise, it had a definite purple hue. On the horizon he could also see a faint rim of purple that appeared to be spreading directly towards him! What could it be, that could move so fast? He stared and stared and began to be able to see details. It looked as if the horizon was filled with quickly growing plants that waved to and fro as they reached for the heavens. He became afraid because no one had ever seen plants that big or behaving like that. The purple plants covered the distance greedily despite the poor irradiated soil, their roots spreading quickly and out in front of the horde, out of the ground popped more shoots that began to grow heavenward. This gave rise to a low rumbling noise that made Vill even more fearful.
Quickly he drove the sheep down into camp and Asher ran towards him, face full of concern because he wanted the sheep to remain on the hill another day until the tribe moved on, “What is it?”
“The purple plants are moving towards us!”
“What bloody plants, have you lost your mind?”
“Come, come,” Vill gestured and leaving the sheep they both ran up the hill towards a faint rumbling noise.
Asher said nothing; his mouth fell open in awe and terror. The plants had reached the rim of the valley and had begun to spread around it, whilst simultaneously growing upwards. The rumbling noise of thousands of roots bursting forth out of the earth became a roaring. On the horizon many of the plants were now a thousand hands high and beginning to develop what looked like fruit pods.
It was obvious that nothing could
be done by the tribe and they could only cower in the small valley unable to run away as the giant plants rumbled above them, their frantic growth making any attempt at escape dangerous. Asher said nothing; he knew and so did everyone else that this was the end of their little band. They had always lived precariously and would now starve as they finished their meagre supply of food. Slaughtering the sheep would only prolong their agony; it would be more merciful to set them free. They all hunkered down in the tents and some crying could be heard from the womenfolk and children. Vill sat alone on a rock watching the movements of the purple trees that undulated back and forth despite there being no wind. The plants made no attempt to come down into the rocky valley, probably because they had plenty of easy growing space in front of them. The sheep were oblivious and content to nibble at the sparse grass of the valley bottom.
The day passed and in the afternoon the rumbling from the vegetation slowly abated and Vill noticed that the nearest plants had reached their adult height and slowly began to bud with fruit pods.
In the evening the light faded and Vill stretched out in front of a small fire and dozed. He was awakened when something rolled into him, but thinking it was one of the sheep he slumbered on until a large ‘crack!’ reverberated and made him sit up and peer into the half light. Oddly, the sheep seemed not to be disturbed and crowded together, munching away loudly.
Vill was about to lie back when he suddenly thought, “What can they be eating, surely not the non-existent grass?” He leaped up and lit his lantern then moved in amongst the munchers and several round objects rolled down the slope of the valley wall. Immediately a sheep moved over and claimed one of the objects. It was the fruit from the purple trees!
Panicking, Vill tried to shoo the animals away from the possibly poisonous fruit but after so long on bad grazing the animals were ravenous and would not be deterred. He felt a hand on his shoulder, it was Asher who said fatalistically, “Don’t worry to stop them, it’s probably too late. If they’re poisoned, then it is The Makers Will.” Asher left Vill, who was then sick with despair and lay back down covering his face with his hands lest tears escape.
Into the Great Darkness Page 5