Blighted Star

Lana turned back towards him and said something which was whipped away in the slipstream. She was pointing down at a large body of water shaped like a love - heart, the lake from which Heart Lake got its name. The road, on which he could see the silver blobs of two or three farmbots working, gently curved along the side of the lake for a kilometre before straightening out as it reached the town. Somewhere under those pleasant looking waters were the bodies of the townsfolk, if the readouts of the tracking system could be believed. From the cluster of red blips only one was missing, and that was located in the third house on the northern side road.

  They crossed over the town and started their descent. Cruising round the streets at a height of ten metres, staring out through the windows of their masks at the empty doorways they glided past. They all looked tense, kneeling with weapons at the ready. Jackson felt the rightness of it all. As a child he had known that this was what he was for; he had always wanted to play war, had wanted to play army long after his schoolfellows had outgrown such games. Whatever happened to him tonight, he had at last achieved the ambition of a lifetime. He was going into combat.

  Everywhere was the confirmation of what the probe had shown; there had been a terrible battle, blood was everywhere lying in black pools. Yet there were no corpses, the only human matter were piles of what, with blenching horror, he realised were the intestines and soft tissues of victims. He was aware of the theory that was forming that they were the victims of an attack by human forces. but no humans could carry out an atrocity like this, surely? If they could, they did not deserve the title “Human” at all. No matter who or what they were. He was going to wipe them out. Lana finished the aerial recce of the town and headed back out the way they had come a little, aiming at a spot on the road a hundred or so metres beyond the last houses. Jackson pulled on his breathing gear and signalled the others to do the same. As the skids of the shuttle scraped on the carbonised surface of the road, a faint breeze blowing towards them through the town brought a stench which they could smell even after the breathing units’ filters had done their work. Jackson jumped out and stood by the flyer as his men disembarked. Glancing back he saw that Lana was gagging and fumbling with the straps of her mask. She was going to remove it! He reached through the airframe and grabbed her hands. As she turned panicking eyes on him he shook his head sternly and pointed up. After a second, she nodded and the shuttle rose straight up into the air, Leaving the noxious fumes below it. Lana’s voice crackled over his comms.

  “Ss – sorry. Rooky mistake. Though I was going to hurl in my mask.”

  “Okay if you had. They’re designed to take it. Should have told you. My fault.”

  “I’ll hover over you. If you need me, I’ll be there.”

  “Good to know.” without taking his eyes off the nearby buildings, Jackson gave a half-wave to the aircraft. And then signalled his troops into combat fours. This left two spare, and these he put on point. He raised his hand, then let it fall, they advanced.

  <><><>

  “Athena! Athena! There’s something really strange going on! Look at the visual I’m sending you. Athena! Are you there?”

  Athena put herself into comms mode.

  “Jim, I’m here. Are you okay? Are you under attack?”

  Jim’s voice had sounded weird, and the picture he was transmitting was wobbly and poor resolution. She wondered why for a moment then remembered that Jim’s internal comms set had been fried in the plasma breach, and that he was using the emergency wrist set they’d sent out on the probe. The picture she was receiving was of a large animal about fifty metres away, moving towards her through the storm’s darkness. It was a horse, but something terrible had happened to it. The image was bouncing around as Jim backed away from the advancing creature, and she could hear his breath rasping away. The display kept flashing, and she thought for a moment that something was wrong with the comms set until she recognised the growling of thunder in the background.

  The horse was in tatters. It looked as if it had been in an explosion, with great shards of skin hanging from it. It moved forward by staggering a few steps, tottering, then staggering a few steps more in a parody of the first steps of a new born foal. Though Jim could keep ahead with ease, there was a sense that the horse would never stop, would pursue him until it finally reached him.

  Its face was the worst. It had no eyes, and the soft velvet of its nose was gone, leaving a gaping hole from which a thickened mass of green, yellow and red dangled and dripped.

  Jim’s shocked face appeared, next to him, Athena caught a glimpse of Grad, he had a guiding arm on Jim’s. And was keeping a lookout in front of them.

  “Athena? What the hell is it? What happened to the horse? It won’t go away, it keeps coming after us, but it looks… it looks dead, Athena. I know that can’t be, but it does. Athena. We need to get out right now.”

  “Keep moving, Jim. Grad, carry him if you have to, I’ll get Lana over there as soon as I can.”

  <><><>

  The tiny biped raced across the dark plain, slewing first one way, then another, whip-like tail whisking out to balance it on the turns, the large red crest of exposed bundles of vassicles pulling enough oxygen from the dense air to fuel its flight, but only just, so that it wheezed and gasped, the primitive lung billowing and collapsing as it bounced behind the biped’s head. The other members of its pod were far behind, it had got a good head start on them when they had been attacked and they had fallen, infected. The disease debilitated its victims somewhat, and the biped was in reality in less danger from them than the panic it felt warranted. The swarm of infected insects were also no threat any longer; insect bodies were quickly used up by the pestilence, their insides liquefying within a few hours, It was unlucky that this had for once been enough time for them to transmit the contagion.

  The biped loped on through the night under the flickering Skagorack, knowing that it had only to survive until the day then it would be able to rest. Its pod had been attacked many times in its short life, and until now the escapes had been alarming but at the same time routine; they had lost a night’s grazing, but had never until this night lost more than a few pod members.

  In some ways the world they had inherited, a world in which they were the fastest thing left alive, was more benevolent than the one in which their ancestors had lived with any of a half dozen species of predator posing a serious threat. Every so often they would be assaulted by infected animals, but even when they found themselves surrounded, their turn of speed was usually enough to get them out of trouble.

  The biped crested a hill and saw before it a herd of rollers, these lumbering beasts were capable of no more than a steady trundle on land, using whip like tentacles at either end of their cylindrical bodies, and were in truth an aquatic species, taking to land only when the pondweeds they fed upon became depleted. The biped knew that it was safe, and it loped down through them, leaving a trail which would lead its pursuers to the slower prey. The rollers, oblivious, kept to their course, pressing down the grass as they went, creating one wide lane as they rolled in single file, the strongest in the lead.

  The biped left the rollers behind and ran up the slope of an outcrop of rock. At the top it caught the first glimmers of the coming day. Perhaps the rollers might live after all. The pursuing dead would be seeking shelter from the sun’s rays soon, and if during the course of the day the rollers could find a sufficiently large stretch of water, then they might swim to safety.

  Dropping down the other side of the outcrop, the biped saw several large shapes out on the dark plain, but felt no fear; these were the remnants of a long dead species of crablike creature, and the empty carapaces were inches thick in moss, the chitin crumbling at the slightest touch. A light rain began to fall, and the biped loped over to one of the empty crab shells and crept in. Tomorrow it would begin the long search across the plains for others of its kind. It had a memory of an encounter many years before with another troupe, far to the west. It would begin its search t
here.

  Chapter 12

  Athena tapped her teeth anxiously “Look, Lieutenant, I really think you should withdraw to the Landing Zone while Lana’s gone. Or at least hold your position. She’s not only your means of escape if you run into trouble. Don’t forget that the shuttle’s also carrying your heavy artillery.”

  Jackson considered what she had said, but it was nothing new, he’d already gone over the same arguments in his mind.

  “She be gone for a hour at least. Meanwhile it’ll be going fully dark and the people at Heart Lake will be getting scared. We get things finished up here while she’s gone, we can get straight over to the blocking point when she gets back. Besides, who’s to say we’re any safer sitting in a field waiting? I appreciate the input, Athena, but we’re going in.”

  A shower of rain had just washed the streets spreading the blood, refreshing it so that under the glare of the illumination panels built into their chest armour, the streets once more had patches of red. Jackson found himself staring at one.

  <><><>

  The weeks of training culminated in a series of combat V.R. tests. Jackson had not done particularly well so far and though the next one was not make or break for his training for command, it was the last one he could afford to fail if he didn’t want a mediocre score. He entered the booth, sat on the chair, and pulled the V.R .helmet down over his head. At once his body felt numb as the precision magnetic field shut off the signals running between his brain and his spine. He had never enjoyed this moment of paralysis at the beginning of every session of V.R., though he appreciated the need to prevent the body responding to the stimuli the brain was experiencing. Undisconnected, the body would give spasms like that of a stressed person drifting into sleep who experiences falling for a moment. With the much more intense input of V.R. you were likely to find your body sprawled across the floor rather than sitting in the chair as you left it.

  The feeling of paralysis passed and he found himself sitting in a seat in a landing craft approaching the planet below. He commed in to the landing craft’s visuals and saw below him a worldscape of verdant green islands separated by stretches of ocean that were, for some reason blood red. Around him a thousand other assault craft were dropping down through the outer atmosphere, heading for their various objectives.

  The scenario was; human settlers had been welcomed by a primitive race of cephalopods who possessed a rich ocean based culture, who could communicate through gestures with their twenty tentacles and seemed peace-loving. At first the humans had prospered, keeping to the land, and there had been no conflicts of interest with the sea living neighbours. Then, inadvertently, the humans had defiled a site so sacred to the cephalopods that only the extermination of every human being on the surface of the planet would expiated the crime. Jackson’s task, in all this chaos, was to command a platoon he had led through half a dozen other simulations, in the securing of a hard pressed compound of human settlers on one of those green blobs below.

  Looking around him in the craft he could see only seven of the original platoon left, and these were a really mixed bag. Most of them held him responsible for the deaths of their comrades, and the animosity they felt for him seemed real, even if the men weren’t.

  The fleet of shuttles dropped closer to the surface, still keeping perfect formation, then suddenly the scene erupted with colour. The surface of the sea was pierced in a thousand places by high – energy beams which probed the sky all around him. Many passed harmlessly into space, but many more struck their targets in the now frail seeming space - to - surface craft. The shuttles which were struck fell from the sky all around him like shot birds, splashing into the sea in plumes of spray, surrounded by the smaller impacts of their own debris.

  Jackson shut his mouth and took a second to think. Eight more ships went down, trailing smoke.

  “Evade! Evasive action!” Still linked to the flyer’s visuals, he watched the ocean below tilt one way, then another. More beams of energy sprang from the crimson surface.

  What the hell was going on? The mission brief had clearly stated that the Cephalopods were tool users, but only at an equivalent level to Earth’s Stone Age. How had they acquired such sophisticated technology? Had they had it hidden all along?

  What should he do? he tried to comm into the fleet ships far above, tried to get new orders, guidance, anything, but the simulation gave him nothing but static. He was being jammed. He looked around, many of the ships were peeling off, heading skywards again, cutting and running. But equally, many of them were pressing on into the lacework of shining beams. He and a hundred or so others dithered in the middle, milling about still taking evasive action. What should he do?

  There was a blinding flash of light in the cabin, and Jackson’s view had snapped back from the landing craft’s visuals to his own surroundings. The beam of light that had transfixed them was now gone, but it had left a green after – image which faded gradually to reveal the carnage that had been caused. About half the platoon were dead, were in fact gone; or had been half vaporised by the strike. A gaping hole in the deck showed the ocean climbing up to hit them, while a corresponding hole above showed the sky from which they were falling. All power was gone, and he couldn’t even patch the craft’s visuals again. He had about twelve seconds to listen to the screams and yells of his men and to wonder what he should have done instead. Then the V.R. ended.

  Comparing notes with the other cadets later, it emerged that there was no “right” answer to this simulation, or at least no way to avoid destruction. The point was apparently to instil in the officers a sense that no matter how much you think you know about the enemy, how exact your intelligence is thought to be, it is still possible to be surprised by an enemy’s strength. It was felt that this was a lesson only bitter experience could really teach, since it called for an adjustment of attitude rather than the absorbing of information. It wasn’t even formally assessed.

  <><><>

  The unit gathered in the centre of the crossroads. A second’s pause to gather themselves, then they split into search teams and advanced in three different directions. As each house was reached, the men took turns to push their way in, conducted a brief search and emerged, making their reports to Jackson.

  “Herschel. Nothing.”

  “Ferelli. Nadir.”

  “Sanchez. No sign, Sir.”

  After twenty minutes of fruitless searching, the soldiers gathered outside the door of the Frenchman, the only door behind which they knew there to be a trace. Jackson held up his balled fist and jerked it once, twice, three times until their attention was all fixed, then keeping the rhythm he extended one, two, then three fingers. On the third finger, two troopers booted the door, smearing the black substance on its surface. The door fell inward on its hinges and a third man, Ferelli, advanced, holding his targe-gun before him. Ferelli’s voice came to Jackson’s ears, both naturally through the air and through the comm - implants.

  “One body Sir. Looks like he choked or something. Otherwise, clear.”

  Jackson looked down on the body in the storeroom. He readily recognised the face of the man who had complained so bitterly and so often over the last week, except that now it was dreadfully distorted; the tongue protruded right out of the mouth, and a ghastly purple overlaid the white pallor of death. The scrabbling fingernails had inflicted gashes on the throat. Jean-Pierre had died coughing and vomiting and had spasmed into the foetal position. Around him, the floor was covered in a dry brown substance like soil which crunched beneath the feet. Jackson picked up a container. It held the same substance, but he was none the wiser. Looking on the shelf he saw the Coffee-Maker. Ferelli saw it at the same time and whistled.

  “Worth a fortune…”

  Jackson checked that the images had been sent, then strode out of the house. His men looked tired already. Well, it was going to be a long night. He called up Lana.

  “Lana, Jackson here. You got to them yet?”

  “Almost there, it’s har
d to see because there’s a storm round here.” As if to confirm Lana’s statement, Jackson clearly heard the crashing of lightning in the background, drowning out the roaring of the wind that she was hearing.

  “Let me know when you’ve got them, we’re moving down to the lakeside now.”

  “Willdo.”

  <><><>

  Lana cut the comms, then concentrated on her flying. Keeping the pared down craft stable in the buffeting inside the storm was proving to be a real bitch. Without the fuselage, the craft had the aerodynamic refinement of an old fashioned shopping basket. Next to her, Patel had already tightened the straps which held him secure as far as he could, but there was still puke on the legs which dangled from the strut he sat on into the howling gale below. She wondered how much use he was going to be on the cannon swaying above him when the time came. He looked up at her with eyes full of misery, and she smiled encouragingly back.

  “Don’t worry, the nanos will be starting to take care of the air sickness any minute. Just hang on in there!” The trooper tried to smile back, but Lana definitely had the feeling that he hadn’t heard a word she had said.

  They couldn’t see anything from up here in the cloud, yet they must be over the position by now. Cautiously, and all too aware that she was flying in darkness with only basic instruments over unknown ground, Lana lost height.

  Dropping below the cloudbase didn’t make the visibility all that much better as the raindrops washed against the windscreen, spreading out like the stars seen from the flight deck of a transiting starcraft. As they slowed, the drops increasingly fell behind the screen, plashing against their faces. Patel stood up on the strut and clipped his harness onto the base of the cannon. He gripped the double handle with both hands and swung the gun down towards the ground, peering through the sights. Lana lost more height, gaining perspective on the ground from the contrast between the rain – lashed lakes and ponds and the sodden grassland. With her greater experience of viewing things from above it was her who spotted them first.