But he really had no choice. He had to follow. Taking a big breath of air and leading with a spear still in his hand, he pushed his head and shoulders through the opening. It was tight, very tight, and the walls themselves seemed to push him back. With a grunt, he set his feet, still outside, and pushed, gaining some ground. His legs churned, toes tearing up the dirt, as centimeter by centimeter, he gained ground. His shoulders, then his arms, made it past, and he grabbed at the floor of the entrance, trying to pull himself forward.
He couldn’t hold his breath any longer, and he let it out with a gasp, followed by a desperate inhalation. He didn’t die. He could breathe. The air smelled funky, a rich, loamy scent that was somehow undercut with the tang of ozone, but he wasn’t suffocating or choking out his life. His lungs weren’t burning.
The walls of the opening remained tight on him, and as he pushed and pulled himself forward, his pants began slipping. With his arms inside, he couldn’t do much about that, so he ignored them.
It took a few more moments of struggle, but he finally made it into the ship—sans pants. It had been like crawling back up the birth canal. The thought made him shudder as he looked around to get his bearings, spear at the ready.
No plant soldiers rushed to attack. There was nothing except for a featureless tunnel, a meter-and-a-half high. Crouched over, Colby crept forward to the end, about four or five meters away. The floor gave way slightly under his feet, which only raised his anxiety.
The tunnel ended in a gate of some sort. He couldn’t see any controls, but Topeka had to have gone this way, so holding the spear out, he pushed himself through.
Any lingering doubts vanished. He was in a ship of some sort. It looked nothing like any Navy ship he’d seen, but there was enough organization and instrumentation to register in his mind as something recognizable. Some of the Hollybolly scifi flicks he’d watched had ship bridges far more outlandish.
He spared only a second to let that thought sink in before his attention locked onto Topeka. She stood in the middle of the compartment, machete raised. And on the other side of her was what had to be the general/captain/big boss/whatever of the ship.
It was a plant, but not like any that Colby had seen before. A meter and a quarter tall, it was rounded and symmetrical, having no discernible front or back. It resembled a torpedo more than a man, if someone had painted that torpedo a slick, greenish black and festooned it with dozens of thick, ropey tendrils that began a fifth of the way from the top, just beneath a slight narrowing of its core, a neck of sorts, beneath a rounded pointed “head.” The tendrils continued in irregular groupings on down until the ends of the lowest of them pooled out onto the floor around it.
It half stood, half leaned against a depression in the wall where some of its tendrils had reached out and connected to the ship itself, piercing or plugging in, at what on a short human might have corresponded to knee- and waist- and elbow-height. Another grouping at the highest point had splayed out on the side facing Topeka, lining up vertically, side by side. It took Colby a moment before he realized what it looked like—like a man raising both hands in a warding gesture, almost pleading, having backed itself away as far as it could.
It wasn’t just fearful, it was scared. Scared for its life.
This wasn’t a general, and if it was the ship’s captain it was probably only by virtue of being the only sapient being on the ship at all. It hadn’t come to fight, that much was clear. Just as Colby could see that Topeka couldn’t care less.
“Stop, Topeka! We need to capture it!” he shouted.
She turned to him, and the honest pain on her face underscored her words as she said simply, “It killed my friends.”
Before she could turn back, the plant opened a sphincter and let out a puff of air that blew Topeka’s hair about, and stopped her in her tracks. Colby froze, expecting to see her collapse or start melting like in the horror flicks, but she slowly wiped her forehead and looked at her arm.
“Is that the best you’ve got? A fart?” she asked, taking another step forward.
“Wait, what’s that?” Colby said, grabbing her by the shoulder and pointing to the small beads that had been smeared around her face when she wiped it.
“Don’t know,” she said, wiping the back of one hand across the opposing sleeve. “They felt like a sandstorm for a moment when it shot them at me, but they’re nothing now.”
“They could be poisonous.”
“All the more reason to end this shit now!”
She pulled out of his grasp and stepped forward, machete raised.
The plant-thing shambled to its left with surprising speed, eager to put some distance between the small woman and itself. Colby took the opportunity to dart forward, stepping between the two. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, what with a creature of unknown capabilities on one side and a crazed woman armed with a machete and hungry for revenge on the other, but he needed to capture the plant, not kill it.
At least the plant wasn’t shooting him with some kind of death ray. In fact, it still looked like it was trying to escape from the two of them. Keeping in front of Topeka, he advanced on the thing. Colby had been the Combined Military Atarashi Karate champion back when he was a lieutenant. He’d kept up his fitness, but he wasn’t sure his training translated into subduing an alien plant.
As if he was still in competition, his body memory pulled him into his kokutsu-dachi stance, body back over his rear leg, left foot thrust forward as he tried to analyze his opponent.
How do you analyze a giant artichoke?
He couldn’t just stand there. That would invite attack or let Topeka get around him. He stepped forward to deliver a mai geri kick. . . and the plant shot a tendril at one of the little helper plants along the bulkhead and threw it at him, smacking Colby in the face before he could block it.
There wasn’t much power behind the throw, but it stung, like getting slapped in the face. The plant’s many tendrils started picking up everything in its reach and throwing them. Colby ducked several more, and from the curses from behind him, he knew some were connecting with Topeka.
“Get out of my way!” she yelled as she pushed past him just as a small, ropy plant hit her square in the face, making her stumble.
She fell into the wall with a thud and collapsed, the machete clattering across the deck and making him jump to avoid the razor-sharp blade.
Colby couldn’t tell if she was seriously hurt, but the berserker in him rose to take over in a wave of anger. Forgetting all the niceties of Atarashi Karate, he let out a bellow and charged. The plant threw two more small plants, each missing as it panicked, then tried to hit him with another blast of rancid, fetid air.
None of that fazed Colby as he slammed into the plant, knocking it to the ground. He tried to grab anything he could to control it, but it was immensely strong as it struggled to get away. He got both arms around one of the stalks and pulled back with his entire body, arms, legs, and back straining, as he tried to rip it off of the thing.
The result wasn’t what he’d expected. Instead of tearing the plant apart, it made an ear-shattering squeal, then went still. Colby didn’t know if he’d killed it, if it was surrendering, or if it was trying to trick him. He held on for a few more moments as the plant quivered beneath him. Hesitantly, he started to ease up.
The plant remained still, so he let go and sat back. As soon as it was released, the plant started to inch away, and Colby reached back up to grab the stalk again. It froze immediately.
It knows if it moves, I’ll tear it apart. That proves it’s intelligent, he told himself.
“Hell, of course it’s intelligent. It’s got a freaking spaceship!” he said aloud. “Use your brain, Edson!”
He had to secure the plant, and if he’d still had his belt, that would be a start. He might even have made do with the legs from his pants, but he was down to his BVDs. He looked back to Topeka for a moment, who was starting to stir. She had a belt, but he wasn’t
going to start disrobing a half-conscious woman.
There wasn’t much else he could see. The interior of the ship was not cluttered like a tramp steamer. There wasn’t a handy coil of monofilament lying around. The only long ropy thing was the. . .
Colby reached up one more time as if to grab the plants stalk, and it shrunk away from him, but didn’t try to escape. He stood up and grabbed one of the small plants the alien had thrown at them. The tendril-like arms were rubbery, not like real rope, but it would have to do. Pulling the first tendril to its full length, he wrapped it around two of the big plant’s stalks, bringing them together. With a quick clove hitch, he secured it shut. The small plant had five such tendrils. He was tempted to just pull them free and use them as individual sections of rope, but he didn’t know how his prisoner would react. Better to keep it calm. There were three more of the ropy plants he could see: a total of 19 more arms.
He didn’t need them all. After ten, it was obvious that their adversary was trussed up like a pig ready for the spit. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Colby looked down at the big plant, breathing heavily. They’d done it. They’d captured the thing. This was the proof he needed to convince the government of the threat, and unlike the spores and the plants it had unleashed on Vasquez, his gut told him this thing wasn’t going to decompose on him any time soon.
“Can you understand me?” he asked.
The thing didn’t respond, not that he’d expected it to. It would have been asking too much for it to have responded with any variation on the “Take me to your leader” trope in crisp Standard.
But a spaceship, even one operated by a sapient plant, was too complex a piece of equipment to operate by hand. It had to possess computers, or plant analogs to computers, and Colby’s implant was one of the most advanced pieces of technology ever developed. He didn’t need to be able to talk directly to his vegetable adversary, not if his implant could communicate with the ship, then he could use that to query the plant. And he needed answers. The battle was over and done. The casualties had yet to be tallied and assessing the full extent of the damage and its impact on provisioning the war effort would take time. But all of that was secondary. He had to find out why it had attacked the planet.
Colby reached out to his implant, opening its access paths to their broadest capacity and giving it a free hand to scan up and down the electromagnetic, mass, energy, and discrete spectra for anything that might carry a signal or provide a path way to communication. “Can you interface with this ship?” There was a delay of almost six seconds, which was centuries in implant time.
“Yes, in a fashion. I have made contact, but there is yet to be a full interface.”
“Keep trying. I want to be able to talk with this thing.”
He turned to Topeka, who was only now sitting up. He hurried over to her, helping her to her feet, and asked, “Are you OK? You hit the wall pretty hard.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she asked. “Is it dead?”
“No, I’ve got it restrained. It’s missing a few parts, and its hurt, but it isn’t dead.”
She shook off his arm and stood on her own. She’d dropped the machete when she’d been flung across the tiny space, and now with real deliberation she walked over to it and picked it up again. Her eyes blazed with anger as she hefted it.
“Topeka,” he said, not liking her look. “Remember, we need to get it back to the government. They need to interrogate it.”
“Interrogate it my ass. That thing killed Sestus.”
“No!” Colby shouted, but in letting her retrieve the blade he’d mistakenly allowed her to get between him and the plant.
With a lunge, Topeka closed the distance with the plant. She gripped the machete with both hands, and with one quick stroke its molecularly-sharp edge cut right through what Colby assumed served as the thing’s neck. The head plopped onto the floor with a sound like a crashing watermelon as the rest of the body slumped in the restraints he’d fashioned.
“What they hell have you done?” Colby cried as he rushed forward.
He pulled the machete from her unresisting fingers, too little, too late.
“Revenge, General. I got my revenge.”
***************
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Colby asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got to see to Riordan.”
They stood outside the ship. Topeka had squirmed back through the way they’d come and Colby had followed more slowly. She’d left his pants for him and went off to retrieve Duke while he pulled himself through the fissure and reclothed himself. Duke had come running into the clearing, tail wagging with more enthusiasm than she’d ever managed for breakfast before. Topeka handed him his belt.
“What if the giants breached the part of the station where you stashed him? We don’t even know if they’re still out there.”
“Yeah, so? You think my odds are worse than your plan to somehow take this alien piece of shit through the wormhole?”
She had a point. His implant was still going through trillions of queries and responses with the plant’s ship, trying to create a communications matrix. Colby was confident that he could lift the ship off the planet’s surface now, but navigating it through a wormhole in order to make his way back to HQ and present the proof of his claims was in no way a done deal. Even if he could aim it at the wormhole, the plant’s ship might not be able to withstand the trip through. His implant had yet to identify anything that might be the vegetable analog of an escape pod. If the ship’s integrity failed, he’d die in the nonspace between. No one would ever find his body. He’d uplinked as much data as he could, but with headquarters alerted to his implant’s previous hack, he had no doubt that the vice minister had since erected barriers to its efforts. His reports might be queued up in a buffer that no one would ever access. If they did get through, Greenstein might not believe him. The man had made a career from lying on paper and that’s how he’d see Colby’s outlandish claims of a planetary attack by an intelligent, alien vegetable. No, Colby needed to present the ship and the body of the plant back to the government. He might have been cashiered, but he still knew enough people who would act upon what was right in front of their faces.
He had assumed that Topeka would come with him, but with the plant-thing dead, she seemed to have lost her fire. It had all happened so fast. A day ago she’d been fighting for her life, and when she’d survived, healthy and whole, alone among everyone she knew, she’d been consumed by the need for revenge. After she killed the alien plant-creature, nothing remained to drive her, and the enormity of her losses sunk in. Now, she only wanted to get back to Riordan and begin the process of rebuilding.
There was absolutely nothing she could do for her friend. He had to remain in the med chamber if he was ever going to survive. Colby doubted she could do much in the way of rebuilding. Clean up some of the debris, assemble some solar cells to keep the power going to Riordan’s chamber, maybe bring a few of the systems back online, but little more. The launch rails could not be repaired without outside help. But the scheduled shipments had stopped coming, and headquarters would send someone through to investigate, with or without Colby’s reports. Still, he understood to some degree her desire to stay busy on the planet, to work at righting some of the wrongs.
Colby’s own situation was different. He’d been exiled to the planet, so he had no attachment at all. Sure, he might die trying to get the ship and dead alien back, but he’d faced death in battle countless times before. This would be no different.
“Well, good luck,” Colby said, suddenly feeling awkward.
She had driven him crazy, and he was still pissed that she’d killed the plant, but she’d been a good wingman. As good as any Marine he’d served with.
“OK, you too,” she said, turning away before she wheeled around and rushed Colby, almost crushing him in a hug.
Colby didn’t quite know what to do, but of their own accord, his arms enfolded around her, taking her in.
“And come back for me, General, or I’ll come find you and kick your ass,” she whispered into his chest.
“I’m sure you would, Topeka. Don’t worry, though. We’ll get you and Riordan off this mudball.”
They held each other for a moment longer before Topeka shifted her hands to his chest and pushed away.
“OK, now, let me get out of here before you destroy the whole forest trying to take off in this thing.” Without another look backward she walked out of the clearing.
Colby turned, and with a command to his implant, caused the ship to reluctantly widen the opening that he’d already begun thinking of as the airlock entry.
“C’mon, Duke, inside.” For once, the dog did as she was told and clambered into the ship. Colby followed, the entry shaft already dwindling and shoving him forward in a manner all too reminiscent of peristalsis. He strode down the corridor to the spot where he’d encountered the plant creature, the spot that his implant assured him was the nexus of all of the ship’s command functions. There was no command chair as humans had, just a rounded depression in the wall, a shallow alcove of sorts. He leaned his back into it and smiled as Duke settled herself on top of his feet.
“Are you ready?” he queried his implant.
“Waiting your command.”
“How about you, Duke? You ready?” he asked, reaching down to pat her head.
She whomped her tail on the floor. Whatever else had happened over the last couple of days, he and the dog had finally bonded. For a brief moment, he’d thought about sending her back with Topeka, but he knew that wasn’t really an option. She wouldn’t have gone, not now, probably not ever.
And truth be told, he was damned happy to have her with him.
“OK, then, let’s punch out of this one-horse planet.”
He gave the command to his implant, and slowly, the alien spacecraft rose into the sky.
END OF BOOK ONE
Thank you for reading Invasion. We hope you enjoyed it. Book 2, Scorched Earth, as Colby and Duke continue their fight against the Gardener, will be out soon. We welcome your review on our novella on Amazon or any other website.
Invasion (Vegetable Wars Book 1) Page 10