by R. M. Meluch
She bashed them with a rock.
Be careful of your eyes, Cain had said. Kerry’s eyes were fine, except they were watering from the stench.
Dak got hold of two of the squigs that were part of the mob carrying the LEN guy away. He yanked them back and knotted their squiggy limbs together. “Yeah! You! Gretta! Like that? Now I’m gonna stomp on your heads!”
Dak turned them over and over. Yelped, “Where’s its fragging head!”
“What? You lost it?” That sounded like Dickus Maximus.
“It don’t got a head! Where’s the head!”
Voices in the dark. “Head’s gotta be in the body.”
“You mean they have their heart in their mouth?”
“No. Their head up their ass.”
“Look at this thing! I don’t even wanna know what that is.”
The aliens weren’t wearing anything like clothing. They looked like stick toys assembled by an unwell mind.
They did have eyes in the back of their heads. No. That wasn’t right. They had one eye behind them but not exactly in the back of the heads. They didn’t have heads, not apart from the body. They were like gorgons that way—everything in one bag. Except it wasn’t a bag. More like a sandwich of really coarse, soggy black bread. And they had fewer legs. A lot fewer legs and only one mouth. Kerry thought that was a mouth, up there next to its top eye.
Twitch had caught up with the crew carrying the dead xeno. He got a tree branch, hollered bloody murder, and wielded his branch like a shillelagh, beating the aliens away from Roodoverhemd’s body. Twitch called for help. “Ayúdame!”
Kerry and everyone else ran in to help him. Forgot about trying to shoot anything. Just glom them with anything you could grab. Rock. Tree limb. Another alien.
“Colonel! We got him!”
Steele called everyone to fall back.
Twitch, Dak, Asante, and Rhino hefted up the xeno’s body onto their shoulders to bear it back to camp. Roodoverhemd wasn’t that huge, but gravity was strong here. Kerry walked backward behind the bearers as rear guard, brandishing a log against any chasers.
Carly carried an alien arm she’d carved off. “Anyone want this?”
Cain glanced her way. “Bring it.”
The Marines returned to the LEN encampment, four of them carrying the civilian Roodoverhemd. The xeno was thoroughly dead.
Steele saw Kerry Blue with them. He died every time she went into action.
She’s a Marine. You can’t shelter her. Best he could do was surround her with veterans. Cain. Twitch and Carly. Dak. Geneva. Asante.
Steele walked up to Director Benet. Spoke in a quiet raspy growl. “We don’t leave a man. Not even yours.”
Then he glanced over his Marines. “Blue, you take a hit?”
Kerry wiped scratches on her brow. She hadn’t known or cared that she was bleeding. “No, sir,” she said. “Thorns.”
The two camp medical doctors took custody of the dead man. A lift hovered the body to the medical hut.
Kerry moved over close to Commander Ryan. Everyone called him Dingo, so it seemed safe to ask him, “Sir? I thought these guys were all kinds of smart?” She meant the LEN scientists.
Commander Ryan hesitated. He said carefully, “They are highly educated people.”
“Yeah? Well there’s more common sense in a bucket of doorknobs.”
Dingo swallowed down a smile. He placed silencing finger to his lips to say be quiet. A man was dead. This was not the time to say anything.
Flight Leader Cain Salvador presented himself to Colonel Steele. Cain’s chest heaved with big breaths. He mumbled to himself first, a comment, “Really like this atmosphere.” Then he said to the colonel, “There’s not much substance to the sponge things. Splinters mostly pass right through them. Sir, I am not that bad a shot, but we detonated a lot of dirt. We’re carrying the wrong weapons.”
Steele nodded. He’d done the same.
They were all becoming aware that Flight Sergeant Asante Addai reeked. More than the rest of them. Asante had stepped into some foul-smelling mud. Afraid it wasn’t mud.
A young corn-fed looking she-xeno assured him, “That is what you think it is. And those?” She pointed at moving strings in the mud on Asante’s left boot. “Those are worms.”
Asante went running back to the woods to find something to scrape off the crap. “Why me!”
“It’s usually me!” Kerry called after him. She hiked a pant leg, checking for worms.
Commander Ryan took a call on his com from the captain. Calli told him to order the return of Colonel Steele’s troops to the ship immediately.
Dingo puzzled. “Sir? We’re good down here. Situation under control.”
“Not up here it’s not,” Calli sent. She didn’t sound happy. At all.
Dingo read the smug expression on Director Benet’s face.
“Damn, Captain,” Commander Ryan muttered into his com. “They went over your pretty head, didn’t they.”
“Affirmative.”
Director Benet announced that the League of Earth Nations itself had issued the order that Merrimack must accept the LEN flag or leave the star system. Any persons on the ground must respect the authority of the expedition director.
Izrael Benet announced, “I will not allow hostile aliens on this world.”
“You’re expelling us as hostile aliens?” Glenn said. “What about those hostile aliens?” She gestured toward the trees. “The ones that killed Dr. Roodoverhemd. They can’t stay here!”
Director Benet spoke. “Actually, it is you, Mrs. Hamilton, who cannot stay here. We never had trouble before you arrived. We order you to leave. At once.”
“I’ll get my gear.”
Already the loud bangs of Marines displacing back to ship echoed off the ring of LEN ships.
Night had fallen to full darkness.
Glenn packed her things. She wished she could have seen the foxes one more time. But they were gone, on their way to another, safer meadow far away from ugly ugly bad bad.
Glenn snugged a displacement strap around her assembled stuff. She took a stand on one of the displacement disks and snapped a displacement collar around her neck. She didn’t know if Patrick was getting the heave-ho too. She would know soon enough. She could not endure Benet’s smug face one more time. She hailed Merrimack to displace her aboard.
“Stand by, Lieutenant,” the D-tech sent.
There was a pause. Glenn waited.
Again, “Stand by.”
A longer pause.
Then, “Stand by, Lieutenant.”
A very, very long pause.
22
IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT, but most of the xenos were still awake, gathered round the fire circle, fearful, mourning the death of their colleague.
Glenn stepped in, took a seat next to her husband on a bench. Patrick’s arm fell naturally around her shoulders.
Benet noticed her. His back stiffened, imperious and personally offended. “Why are you not gone?”
“I—” She faltered. This felt worse than she ever could have imagined. “Can’t. I’ve been sacked.”
“Oh, you liar.”
Glenn blinked. A lot of people blinked.
“I beg your pardon,” Glenn said.
Director Benet stood up. He went to his office hut and got on the com. Everyone could hear him yelling. Calling down the LEN authorities. Promising reprisals. Demanded the captain of the Merrimack remove Glenn Hamilton from the planet.
Captain Carmel advised Director Benet, “Glenn Hamilton has lost her commission. She is not an officer of this ship or of this Navy. This is a space battleship. No one has authority to order a Naval vessel to take civilians on board except under an SOS. A LEN vessel brought Glenn Hamilton to Zoe. She may leave the way she came.”
Kerry Blue was bottled up in quarantine with the other returning ground troops in the Displacement department on Merrimack, waiting her turn to pass through decontamination. They were going through one b
y one. Returning troops never had to go through this before. Merrimack wasn’t equipped for it in numbers.
Kerry Blue sat cross-legged on the deck and played poker.
“Your forehead looks nasty, Blue,” said Rhino. She tossed her ante into the pot. They were playing with potato chips.
“Does it?” Kerry tossed in her ante. “Stings.”
“Looks like an infection,” said the Yurg, dealing.
“Can’t be,” said Kerry. “MO told me I can’t catch alien diseases.”
“These aliens have DNA,” said Asante. “Who dealt this crap?”
“DNA?” said Rhino. “Honestly?”
“What does that mean?” said Kerry.
“Means we can catch diseases,” said the Yurg. “That’s why we’re stuck in here playing these awful cards. Asante, did you shuffle?”
Asante said, “Blue, are you in or you out?”
Kerry wasn’t looking at her cards. “I have an infection? Does this mean I can’t sleep with anyone?”
“What do you care?” said Rhino. “Who you been sleeping with?”
“Nobody,” said Kerry Blue. Threw down her cards. “I’m out.”
Captain Carmel had Merrimack’s own xenoscientists analyzing the wreckage of the alien orb that had slammed into Merrimack. They found the spherical hull packed solid with equipment. There was no compartment that might have housed any kind of pilot. The xenos had harbored a lingering fear that they would break the spacecraft open and find an intelligent ant colony inside. A dead intelligent ant colony.
But all was well. The orb had been operating from an internal program. Its guts were splayed across the xenos’ work space.
Weng and Ski were as happy as a couple of xenogeneralists hip deep in xen.
“Gentlemen,” said Calli Carmel surveying the whole of the disassembled alien craft, “What is it?”
Ski stammered. Dr. Sidowski had trouble putting words together around Captain Carmel. She was very pretty.
“Can tell you what it’s not, sir,” said Weng.
“And it’s not . . . ?” Calli waited for the blank to fill in.
“Roman,” said Weng.
“Terrestrial,” said Ski.
“Local,” said Weng.
“Do we have an age on these vessels?” Calli asked.
“No, sir,” said Weng.
“Not yet,” said Ski.
“I want to know who is driving these spaceships and from where. I need you to give me an idea when they were manufactured and how long they’ve been here. Then trace them back to their planet of origin.”
She already knew that the orbs’ control system was a program of an unknown operating system. She had sent that part to the cryptotech Qord Johnson.
Calli asked her xenogeneralists, “Are the orbs connected to the extraplanetary aliens my Marines met on planet?”
“Likely,” said Ski.
“Definitely,” said Weng.
When Weng and Ski said the same thing, you had to believe them. “How so sure?” Calli asked.
“They signed their work.” Weng held up a curved piece of the orb’s hull. On it was etched the outline of a three-toed—or fingered—appendage.
Flight Sergeant Delgado had brought the xenos a severed alien appendage. It didn’t have any nails on it because the creature had thrown its full arsenal before it got severed. But when Ski and Weng reattached the nails, the handprint matched the pattern on the orb.
The alien arm, which looked exactly like an alien leg, was multijointed. “The skeleton is not bone,” said Weng.
“Which is to say it’s not calcium,” said Ski.
“They are not native to Zoe,” said Weng.
“You’re sure?” said Calli.
“These creatures aren’t DNA-based,” said Ski.
“And everything else from the planet is,” said Weng.
“What’s the biochemistry of this?” Calli pointed a long finger at the alien arm.
“It’s a new one to us,” said Ski.
“Organic,” said Weng.
“Which is to say carbon-based,” said Ski.
“But these are built with a whole different box of biological blocks,” said Weng.
“Not entirely different,” said Ski. “The amino acids are at least left-handed,” said Ski. “As are ours.”
“Our amino acids are left-handed,” Weng clarified. “Not our actual hands.”
“This has some amino acids I’ve never seen before,” said Ski.
“We don’t have a live specimen,” said Weng. An implicit request that. He sounded hopeful.
“You’re not going to get one,” said Calli. “These things are intelligent. So the LEN would call that kidnapping.”
“Which is in stark contrast to locking up Naval officers,” said Weng. He’d heard about the Hamster and her man.
“Apparently,” said Calli.
“Then can we get a dead one of these?” Ski asked. He picked up the appendage. “A whole one?”
Calli made a motion with her head that said maybe. “Colonel Steele’s dogs were not gentle when they retrieved the scientist’s body.”
The aliens had not been as devout as Marines about retrieving their own fallen comrades. The alien bodies were probably still in the woods where they dropped. And since their amino acids were different from Zoen natives, it was possible the local scavengers hadn’t cleaned them up already.
Captain Carmel hailed the command deck. “Mister Ryan, do we still have swords in the armory?”
The next evening, a group of xenos from the LEN expedition ventured into the forest in a phalanx, carrying polymer shields, in hopes of opening a dialog with the aliens.
Instead they collected a large sample of finger and toenails in their shields’ meshwork. Dr. Maarstan took a nail in the foot. The others had to carry him back to camp. They brought along a struggling “guest.” It had no finger or toenails.
No projectiles chased the xenos on their retreat back to camp. The other creatures had abandoned their comrade to his fate, or else they had shot themselves empty.
There was no fast reload when you had to grow your own bullets.
The LEN “detained” the one creature, which was a polite word for taking it prisoner. “Not thuggish at all,” said Glenn.
“You would say that,” said Director Benet. “And I admit it. The action is thuggish, but we have no intention of hurting the being. It will be released immediately we have talked to it.” The LEN needed to impress on the being the humans’ peaceful intent and willingness to communicate.
They restrained their guest by its five appendages. They spoke soothingly, but the being would not be calmed. The humans didn’t know how to safely tranq it.
The alien showed no interest in communicating. It vomited and shat on them. Now it was just writhing, its spongy sides heaving, the orifice on its shoulder moving, no sounds but gurgling and hissing coming out.
It didn’t have a skin. All terrestrial life, down to the single-celled organisms, had a container, a sac, a membrane, a skin. This didn’t. The oblong body was two sponges that might be lungs, in between which other ersatz organs were strung. The jointed arms and legs were stranded with sinew and chitinous ball-jointed bone.
Director Benet enlisted the expedition’s resident linguist, Dr. Patrick Hamilton, to tell him what the alien was saying. “Please come communicate with it.”
“No,” said Patrick.
“Let me rephrase,” said Benet. “Come communicate with it.”
Patrick balked, loathing. “I am working on foxes and mammoths. I came here to work with fox languages. I don’t have any interest in those toadstools—and by that I don’t mean to call them funguses. I mean to call them the stuff that comes out of a toad.”
“You are here for what the LEN needs you for, Dr. Hamilton. Tell me what this being is saying?” said Benet, as if Patrick could pull a magic translator out of his ear.
Patrick walked to the hut where the thing was held captiv
e. Because the aliens only came out in the dark, the xenos kept the hut darkened.
The alien made no noise that might be speech, though its mouth was wide open. Its shoulder eye strained on its stalk.
Patrick gave a huff. “Okay. I think I can help you out on this one, Izzy. Nearest I can translate what this thing is saying is ‘AAAAAAHHH-HHHHHHHH!’”
When the thing yanked its own arm off, there was no choice but to let it go. Upon release the alien threw rocks at the humans and scrambled in perfect terror back into the forest.
“Thank you for all the effort you put into that translation,” Benet said.
“It’s probably not talking at all,” Patrick said.
Benet scowled. “How can you possibly imagine that spacefaring beings do not talk?”
Patrick shrugged. “Maybe because they don’t have ears.”
Patrick got on the com to consult with the xenogeneralists on board Merrimack. He had to make sure he wasn’t lying when he told the director that the aliens didn’t have ears. “Do they really not have ears?”
Weng answered, “Nope.”
Patrick hesitated. “Nope, they don’t really not have ears?”
“They have no ears,” said Weng.
“That fits,” said Patrick. “They have mouths but they still can’t scream.”
Ski said, “The clokes have no external orifice designed to pick up vibrations in the atmosphere. Doesn’t mean they can’t feel vibrations through solid objects same as you and I.”
Weng: “But we haven’t confirmed that part.”
Ski: “They don’t have any skin.”
Weng: “Never seen anything like them.”
Ski: “No external membrane. No exoskeleton.”
The xenos sounded excited.
Weng: “The rigid structures in their appendages are fibrous alien proteins, similar to chitin.”
Ski: “We’re pretty sure they can regrow their nails.”
Patrick nodded. “Yeah. They’re probably reloading even as we speak.”
Weng: “That would require nourishment. We don’t know what clokes eat.”
“Clokes?” Patrick echoed.
Weng: “That’s what the Marines are calling the extraplanetaries. Cloke. It’s short for cloaca.”