by Jacen Aster
Sam made a questioning noise. “Won't the new plant be too weak to take out that super-sized version out there?”
Lore hesitated, but Henry answered, “Not if we do this strategically. Cut the spaceport power and shut down virtually everything, even the barrier, in the colony. Set up a dozen mobile generators beforehand, the remaining mechs, some larger transports, that sort of thing, at locations around the super-neriola. Hook up the tame neriola vines and let them draw a bit of power while the super-neriola zones in on the sources, then shut the generators down when a single vine reaches each spot. The tame-neriolas will switch targets to the intruder and attack it from a dozen points. We just need to pick points that it won't be able to get very many vines into.”
Sam looked at him in surprise. “Great, now we're channeling the mayor, using military tactics of deception and ambush to beat a plant.”
Henry just grinned.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Henry looked a little askance at Sam as she and a trio of the remaining militia loaded heavy pulse rifles into the air transport they were prepping for the mission to bring back vine samples.
“Isn't the point not to feed them energy? Why are we bringing pulse rifles?”
Sam looked over at him with a puzzled expression. After a moment, her face cleared and she grinned. “Oh right! You've been so in the thick of it since you landed that you don't know much about the planet, huh? Remember when Lore said neriola plants have few natural predators?”
“Yessss....”
Sam positively smirked. “‘Few’ isn't ‘one.’ There are things that feed on neriola plants, mostly on the young plants. The pulse rifles are for the legravils, the only thing that will eat even mid-sized neriola. Nothing but other neriola will attack the large ones, but packs of legravils will take on a mid-sized plant.”
Henry was suddenly far more concerned about their little expedition. “Ah, and we need pulse rifles? Are they aggressive?”
Sam shrugged. “Strictly speaking, they are herbivores. But as you can imagine, any herbivore that can take on a neriola plant, even in a pack, isn't exactly a fuzzy harmless ball of fluff. Think four hundred pound wild hog mixed with wolf-like teeth and tiger like claws, and you've got the general picture. Oh, and they travel in hunting packs of at least five, more normally seven or eight.”
“Lovely,” Henry said, a little faintly.
She laughed. “Relax, they generally won't bother humans, but they can be a bit territorial over their food supply. Which we are technically stealing from them. So the pulse rifles are just in case.”
“Somehow that doesn't make me feel all that much better.” Henry muttered despondently, but climbed into the transport nevertheless.
She just laughed harder. Henry thought this might be becoming a pattern.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
If Henry was prone to panicking, he figured now would be an excellent time to do so. Getting the neriola vines had been child's play. Land in an area with small ones, hack a few off with a good old nano-edged machete, throw them in the dura-alloy airtight lab containers, and whistle a merry tune. Dealing with the twelve, that's right twelve, legravils that apparently didn't like them making off with their food, not so much. All while they, and the crates of vines they needed, were three hundred meters down a steep, rocky incline from their transport. Yeah, that was just a little bit more problematic.
One of the two still mobile militia let loose with another stream of pulser fire, singeing the fur on a legravil that had darted in to snap at Sam and Henry as they shifted the crates to cover the group on two sides. The legravils had lost three of their number in the initial exchange, making them cautious, but apparently it wasn't enough to abandon their claim on the plants.
The last crate shifted into place and he and Sam collapsed behind it. Maddeningly, he was still calm even when the rational part of his brain was saying he should be screaming and flailing his arms about in terror. Instead, he simply turned to the panting form of Sam beside him and snarked, “Some day, huh?”
Sam let out a weird half strangled giggle-snort, at least that's all Henry could call it, and incredulously managed, “Day? Try a bloody month of crazy! I'm supposed to be a starship captain, not fighting alien plants and herbivores that make wolves look like puppies!”
“Well, on the bright side, you have my charming presence around. Gotta give the plants at least some credit for that.”
She gave a proper snort this time. “Sorry, Henry, but unless you're going to give in and kiss me, that's not quite enough incentive.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? I didn't know a kiss from me had such a high market value.”
She glared at him.
He threw up his hands and tried again. “Well, you did get to punch a politician?”
Her glare morphed into a satisfied smirk as she remembered punching the mayor when the remnants of the milita had brought him in. “Ah, good times. If we survive this, it might have been worth it.”
Having caught his breath, and listening to another exchange of snarls and pulser fire, Henry nodded his head. “Well, let’s see about surviving this then. Think you can reach that pulser?” He nodded to the weapon lying next to the third militia man, downed in the initial ambush.
She peeked over the crates, looking calculatingly at the weapon. It was halfway between them and the large fungal columns that the legravils were fading in and out of. “Not without a distraction.”
“Good thing I've got one then.” He dug into his jacket's large pockets, fishing out his personal multi-tool. It was a high-end model that could reconfigure using hard light into any number of useful tools. Prying it apart, he took out the equally high-end power cell.
“What?” Sam looked confused, at least until Henry popped open the crate they were leaning against and grabbed the half meter long vine they were transporting. The weakened vine began reaching for the power cell immediately, albeit ineffectually for the moment.
Henry chuckled. “There's a lot of power in this little sucker and these things grow fast when they have power. If I connect them and throw it right before you take off, our toothy friends should have something to focus on for at least a few moments.”
Sam's answering grin was quite maniacal. “Bet they've never seen a super-expanding vine flying at them before.”
“Let’s hope not. On three.” They both braced themselves. “One, two, three!”
Henry slammed the plant and power source together on two and threw it on three. Sam sprang up and over the crates to follow it an instant later. Only a few meters out, the vine started expanding wildly, rapidly growing too heavy for forward motion and dropping just on their side of the columns. It had done its job however. The startled legravils had given out a high-pitched yelp and scattered away from the vine. Sam slid to the pulser, grabbed it and reversed motion. Two of the legravils tried to follow her, only for the militia to use their charge to land solid hits. Mere seconds after she first vaulted over the crate, Sam was back, panting but laying the weapon out on the crate and opening fire.
The legravils lost only one more member of their pack before pulling back. Henry dragged the injured militia man, who proved to be in bad shape but not dead, and two of the four crates back to the transport under the watch of the pulsers.
“Two should be enough. The others aren't worth the risk, and he needs a medic,” Henry said, gesturing to their injured comrade.
Sam only hesitated a heartbeat before she confirmed. “Agreed. Into the transport. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
The last status light on the board turned green as air transport three reported itself in position. Henry stretched out the kinks from two hours hunched over various consoles and stated the obvious. Because someone had to.
“Well, that's the last of them. All mobile generators are in place. Splices report functional, if hardly optimal. Pity this is such a rush job. We're going to lose a lot of perfectly good po
wer.”
Sam gave a dismissive wave. “As if we give a damn about the power. Even if we got not so much as a joule or erg out of this plan, but drained that damn plant dry, I'd still be perfectly happy.”
Lore nodded in acknowledgment. “And we can always fix the energy loss later, if this works.”
Henry made a noise of agreement but didn't bother voicing anything further on the issue. They were both right, after all. “Well, then, I guess it's time to start the party.”
Sam nodded and moved to the projection platform. After a few hand signals to the operator, she spoke into the comm. “Operation is green. Colony has gone dark. All units, generators to maximum power.” A few moments passed with everyone watching the indicators displaying the new power output spikes in twenty-three locations around the colony and research outpost. When the slowest generator hit half power, she motioned to Lore and spoke again. “Spaceport power plant shutdown in five. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Commence shutdown.”
Lore tapped the command and the power output from the spaceport dropped radically, showing only the ambient power that was still bleeding off, rather than active generation. A few moments more and even the ambient power was fading.
Lore gave a thumbs up and Sam spoke a third time. “Spaceport is cold. Plant reaction is,” she looked at another screen, “shifting focus to the generators. Generators twenty and eighteen, you should have visual in a few moments.”
A tiny voice came back out of the lab's speakers. “Confirmed. Contact at generator twenty. Plant is entering choke point, preparing countermeasure.”
A much more informal voice added, “Ditto for eighteen. Getting the party started.”
The calls continued to come in from all twenty-three sites. Clean contact was reported across the board and power was flowing from the super plant into their own reserves.
Sam stepped off the projection platform, looking confused. “So that's it?”
Lore, upbeat in the face of success, responded, “Yep! It's just a matter of time now. We're getting a steady drain and we already know they can't easily breach the alloys we used to secure the ambush points.”
Sam frowned. “But where's the explosion?”
Lore looked confused. “Explosion? We didn't plan any explosions. That would kinda defeat the whole ‘don't feed the wildlife’ angle here.”
“Yeah, but Henry is involved. There should be an explosion! Or some other disaster. It's kinda creeping me out here.”
“Hey!”
Ignoring Henry's indignant interjection, Lore considered her point. “Hmmm, you're right. Now that you mention it, that is a little concerning. Maybe nearly getting eaten when you retrieved the plants counts?”
Sam shook her head. “Nah, that wasn't perilous enough. I was expecting a giant plant golem or something equally absurd.”
“That would fit.”
Henry just grumbled. At least until the klaxon's went off. Then he cringed.
Sam brightened. “Ah ha! That's more like it. Someone kill that noise and tell me what just went horribly wrong.”
There was a pause for nearly a minute after the racket stopped. Finally, a junior researcher spoke up, “I don't know, ma'am. There doesn't seem to be a cause.”
Sam, Lore and Henry all frowned. The latter two moved to take over the console from the researcher, who looked quite relieved to be free of the responsibility. This probably wasn't exactly what he'd signed up for. Several more minutes passed by.
Sam tapped her foot impatiently. “Well?”
Lore shook her head and Henry frowned...and then the researcher that had stepped away coughed, hard.
Henry realized it first. “It's the spores! Something must have cracked the outpost’s atmospheric seal during all this. When the barrier went down, the spores started seeping in.” Both he and Lore began frantic typing.
Lore spoke up next. “Confirmed. Toxic spores all over the outpost. It looks like several people are already down.”
“The plants?”
Lore shook her head. “More likely the thermal mines.”
Henry suddenly surged up the console, climbing atop it and pulling out a micro-welder. Standing on the console, he reached up next to the fire sensor on the ceiling and turned the welder on. Within moments, a torrent of water was pouring from the suppression systems.
Sam shrieked as she was unexpectedly drenched. “What the hell, Henry!”
“No. That was brilliant.” Lore tapped a few commands. “Yes! He tied the whole system into that one detector and switched it to water only. The suppression systems are going off everywhere in the outpost and the water will neutralize the spores already in the air.”
Looking very wet, and more than a little miffed about the lack of warning, Sam asked, “What about the colony?”
Lore waved her concern off. “They should be fine. They are hunkered down in the shelters since the atmo barrier is down. Those seals were checked beforehand. We need to worry about us now. We're the only ones outside to turn everything back on and the water is only a short-term solution.”
Henry had clambered down while they were talking. “Lore, did you find where the leak was coming from?”
She shook her head. “It looks like it's coming from everywhere. Probably micro-fractures all over, which is why it took so long for it to reach a dangerous level. We shut down the barrier hours ago.”
“Shit, no way we can seal them then. This place is lost until the barriers go back up.”
Sam looked at him like he was crazy, and voiced the same. “Are you nuts? There's no way we can run everything from anywhere else.”
Lore grimaced. “He's right. Even if we broke the respirators out, the spores can soak in through the skin eventually, and this operation will last hours at least, maybe days. We need another option.”
Henry was pacing, muttering to himself as Samantha and Lore offered up and shot down various ideas. They'd never reach the Colony HQ without falling to the spores and the spaceport was almost certainly permeated with them. Abruptly, the unpleasant rain of water stopped.
“Shit,” Lore muttered into the silence. “With most of the power down, the reservoirs can't be refilled. Time's up.”
Henry lurched into action, grabbing respirators from the wall. Throwing them first to the two technicians and junior researcher present, he ordered, “Take those, move through the outpost, do a headcount and get everyone into the containment lab we were using for plant samples. That place is still air-tight. We checked it when we brought the samples in.”
Dismissing them as they fumbled to catch and put on the masks, he tossed one each to Sam and Lore before grabbing another for himself. “Sam, issue whatever orders you need to give the ambush sites for us to pull up and move. We'll be off air at least a half hour.” She nodded and moved off to the projection platform, opening the comm herself, the technician already on the way out. She began rapid firing orders.
“Lore, help me grab all our data. Transfer what you can onto portables.” They frantically pushed all their data, plans, maps, access codes, and comm codes onto a pair of portables. It would only be a fraction of what they had here, but it was better than nothing.”
Sam rejoined them a few minutes later. “Where are we going?”
Henry stood, pulling a protesting Lore to her feet as well. “An air-cab to the spaceport, dock nineteen. There was a courier boat there being serviced. No way they got it spaceworthy in time to evac with the rest of the ships. Ship like that should have enough comm and processing power to do what we need.”
Sam stared at him for a moment before protesting, “The spaceport? Have you lost it, Harper? That place is still covered in nerolia super-vines. They'll eat the air-cab alive. Besides, the courier would be shredded before we even took off! They aren't exactly known for their armor.”
Henry gave a sardonic grin. “Careful what you wish for Sam. You wanted an explosion. Well, congratulations! You've been upgraded to action heroine just for today.” Clapping her o
n the shoulder, he pulled Lore away from the console and herded them at a dead run for the outpost’s loading dock.
Respirators on, they made it to the loading dock and Henry quickly pointed out the biggest air-car, more an air-bus really, and pushed them aboard over Sam and Lore's protests. “Don't worry. Don't worry. It's just a really big sacrificial decoy.”
That brought Sam up short, looking like she had an inkling where this was going and not liking it at all.
Lore just looked confused. “Decoy? Then why are we on it?”
Henry gave her a big grin as he broke open the panel under the dash and began ripping out fuses and rewiring things that looked like they probably ought not be rewired. “Simple, my dear. So we can get as close as possible before we jump.”
Sam paled, and when Lore just made a confused noise, she asked in a monotone, “Henry, are you intending to ram this air-bus into the side of the spaceport?” When he nodded, Lore matched her pallor. “And you intend us to jump right before we crash?”
“Yep! The fiery explosion will make a great distraction for all the plants. Oh, and this way you get your explosion.”
In a near mechanical voice, Sam turned to Lore and deadpanned, “Lore, please remind me to punch Henry if we make it through this alive.”
A wide-eyed Lore just nodded.
“Also, please don't let me complain about a lack of explosions again.”
A much more empathetic nod followed the first.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
The air-bus slowed for just a few moments on its pre-programmed suicide run. Sam was silent as she dove out of the vehicle, dragging a very much not silent and definitely shrieking Lorana Reichen with her. She tucked herself around the far less athletically inclined girl, buffering her from the impact and rolling them both as best she could. Henry joined them with a thump, somehow still on his feet and pulling them to theirs. She took a swing at him, which he barely dodged, then gave an aggrieved grunt as he pulled her along, her aching limbs protesting every movement. Lore stumbled but righted herself as she too was pulled along. She managed to gasp a thanks as they made the entrance, thankfully ripped open by, doubly thankfully, no-longer-present vines.