by Jim Rudnick
As the small group wound around a roundabout with a couple of distressed cars, Javor saw a nice-looking building right ahead. It was made of some kind of white stone, but whatever it was, it shone nicely in the sunlight. In front of it was landscaping that had long ago gone wild but still gave the building some kind of uppity status, he thought, so he asked about it. “Is that the cadre home turf?”
The woman grunted as she stepped over the remains of a burned telephone pole and went through the small hedge at the edge of the property. Javor followed and noted that Bixby came along too. He seemed even to know where a shortcut was as he bounded ahead, and he reached the front portico of the building before the humans did, sat, and waited.
The woman and the oil drum man followed, and Javor came up last. The sniper man had disappeared, and Javor raised an eyebrow at that.
“Rescuing you took Bruce away from his post up top. Best shot on Bones for sure,” she said.
He stopped her as they were just about to enter the building’s front door.
“Bones? This planet was called Ceti4 in Gallipedia—has there been a name change?” he asked.
She nodded to explain.
“Not officially—but all of us down here on Ceti4 have taken to calling our world Bones—like a skeleton, eh? Boathi bombs on our power plants and the virus they unleashed on the people have left just the skeleton of Ceti4—hence Bones … easier to say too, eh?” she added and then opened up the front door but held out a hand to stop him.
“Wait,” she said. “We have pretty dumb AI here, but it’s gotta find you, scan you, and then ask for your okays … just stand still.” she said “AI login.” out loud.
Ahead of him in the large foyer of the three-story building, a bot sat dead ahead. From the large machine, a beam of green lanced out to look at the woman first, and across the bot’s screen, flashing lights flickered—all turning green.
The green beam moved to him, Javor realized, and those lights flashed and flashed some red colors too—and then the bot’s klaxon sounded loudly.
The woman quickly said, “AlphaControl—execute stop order nine dash T sixty-six,” and the green beam snapped off and the bot seemed to go to sleep.
“You’re human, right?” she asked. “As the AI found something it didn’t like,” she added.
He tilted his head to her and then smiled.
“Was an athlete like forty years ago—blew out my complete right knee. It’s been rebuilt with alien technology and tissue—two or three times as strong as a human knee. But yes, I have had some issues with security scans since then. Could you have your AI re-look at me and somehow ignore the knee?” he asked, and she nodded.
She walked right up to the large machine, made a couple of passes on the keyboard, and then said, “Stand still” once more.
He did just that, and once again, the green scan beam looked him over from head to toe; lights flashed and then the bot seemed to be satisfied, as it said in a mechanical voice, “Authorized, subject will be noted as B thirteen. Please use that code to login in future,” and then the green beam switched off.
He would have to remember that login ID, but he was glad that he’d passed. Of course, three shells from his shotgun would have also gotten him into the building too, but that was another story.
“Upstairs—let’s grab a bite and we can chat there,” the woman said, and she took the stairs two at a time, while Javor followed her with the oil drum man.
In a small anteroom, the two cadre members divested themselves of their vest armor, weapons, and extra ammo packs. Oil drum man also tucked away a couple of throwing knives into a cubby, and Javor put his shotgun down on a side bench. The Colt he’d keep on his hip, which he thought was prudent, no matter what kind of sideways glance that got him from the woman.
She also took a moment in front of the long mirror to comb out her hair and use a wet-nap to clean her brow for a moment and then grinned at him.
“This way—Jimmy is on lunch duty today, so it’s gonna be good,” she said and led the way out of the anteroom to a larger area that would have once been called the mezzanine, as it looked down on the big foyer below.
From a large table against the wall, another man nodded to him as the woman pushed Javor to be first in the lineup for food. He handed Javor a plate, piled already with a good-smelling stew, added a big chunk of fresh bread, and then pointed to the silverware and napkins.
“Sorry, as usual, ‘til we get over to Lindos for more spices, we’ve got no hot sauce at all,” he said apologetically.
Javor nodded. The stew smelled so good he was sure he didn’t need anything extra.
He took a seat at the large round table, ensuring that here he could see the foyer and the stairs if not the actual doorway outside and the doorway to his right to the anteroom too. Tactical, still, he thought. He noted that Bixby had also climbed the stairs and now sat with his side against the mezzanine bannister's down to the foyer.
The woman joined him with twice the amount of stew on her plate and a bottle of water as well, something he’d missed, but a quick nod to oil drum man who looked at him at that instant got him one too.
The three of them sat. When Jimmy joined them, the woman talked, mouth full at times, as she began to polish off the mountain of food in front of her.
“You know the history, right? Eight years ago, the Boathi dropped hundreds of bombs on our power plants, dropped virus bombs, and the NEMPS that they detonated killed all of Ceti4’s—Bones’—electronics. All of them. We now have what we’ve taken those eight years to re-learn and re-manufacture,” she said as she dipped a torn corner of that fresh bread into the stew and slopped up a whole mouthful at once.
“Since then, society has reconfigured itself. Virus killed like 99.9 percent of us—the ones that didn’t die split into a couple of camps—sects or cults, I’d guess. Some of us are fine—like the Regime and our cadre. Not many of us though—say like ten percent of the total Bones population. The rest the virus didn’t kill, but it made them kill and eat flesh—kill anyone, even each other if they can and eat each other too. If a zombie—and yes, I hate that word too, bites you—you’re a zombie. Takes a couple of days for the virus to totally infect you, but you become one of what we call the dumb zombies, can’t talk, can’t reason … only kill and eat.” She took another large bite of bread and stew. She guzzled down a half bottle of water to wash that away, tucked the heel of her hand into her chest to force back a belch, and continued.
“However, sometimes—and we’ve no idea why this happens—a smart zombie is created. Still can talk, reason, still wants to kill, mind you, but eats food same as us. They’re smart—smart as us. That was one of their traps you were in—but here in Maxwell at least, there’s so few of them that they can’t do much really. They do fill their ranks by bringing a few of the dumb zombies into their group with a bite—does make the dumb ones a bit smarter but not so much as we’d notice,” she said toying with her water bottle.
“Your shotgun told us something was amiss hence our double-time to that trap, and I doubt that they’ve even sent anyone to look into that. So we found you. And that’s us …” she said as if to quit with her tales.
“Not quite—mind telling me who you all are,” Javor said as he spooned another good-tasting mouthful into his mouth.
“Sorry, sure—I’m Sue Fines—leader of the Maxwell cadre group. Sniper up top right now is Bruce Ridgeway, best shot on Bones. This here is Wayne Barker, who you met at the trap, and our cook today—we take turns, eh—is Jimmy Bellanie. Great stew, Jimmy,” she added as she was now wiping up all the dregs of the stew off her plate. Only one not here is Rick Parkin—he’s off hunting somewheres—he too is a great shot, in the woods, I mean.”
Javor looked at her and then down to the remains of his plate of stew.
“So with various factions—what’d you call them, sects, I think, all at war, how do you feed and look after yourselves? School for the kids—though I’ve not seen a sin
gle one as yet? Society? Culture? Travel? And yes, power? How did that stew get cooked today?” he asked.
Wayne answered since Sue’s mouth was full of the remnants of her bread and stew.
“Food is a cooperative mostly. We suspend our adversarial tendencies to shop at the farmer’s co-op, and that goes for the cadre and the smart zombies only here in Maxwell. Dumb zombies eat each other—wish they’d hurry up,” he added.
“Those power-destroying bombs all those years ago did do something to the climate too—we get bad, bad storms sometimes. Our northern latitudes have a climate that is much colder than it used to be too, we’re told. And oh, if you ever hear of a nor’wester, meaning a storm coming from the northwest, then you’d better batten down the hatches, ‘cause they’re always real doozies,” Jimmy added.
“After a decade or so, the farmers gathered and become pretty important for all of Bones—and we all learned to treat them like a neutral in our own lives. Power is different though, but again it’s like the folks who now provide power—and that’s a whole other story as to who can get power and at what costs—do so but you apply. You pay and no there’s no money on Bones either—you pay with what you get asked to supply. Then there’s the Slavers—those who capture and enslave folks to sell them to the farmers or to the power apostles too, but not many of them around here. Free cities too, like Lindos, are popular as within same all have access to buy and sell whatever one might want. Not as safe as we’d like, but still Bones exists,” he said.
“And then along comes a spaceship,” Sue said, and that brought them all up to Javor’s story, and that was where he’d have to think on it for a bit. And he said so.
“Lots here to digest—and before I tell you my story, I will need rest,” he said, as he stood up and looked around.
“Down there, last doorway on the left has a great couch—you and your dog will be fine in same, and yes, the door will lock,” Sue said as she burped this time right out loud.
He grinned at her, complimented Jimmy with great lunch, and ambled off after giving Bixby a whistle.
Together they entered what must have at one time been a private office. He closed and locked the door behind him too. The only other door went to a bathroom, so he took over the couch, and Bixby came over to lie at his side. His hand fell off to pet the dog who lay still, and soon both were asleep. Their first full day on Bones came to a close.
#####
The Boathi captain was livid, his green scaly skin almost glowing with indignation.
“Explain yourself, Sub-alternate, and you’d better be correct,” he said to a cowering crewman on the bridge.
The Sophon had been scouring this system—all three planets within the Goldilocks zone—for two whole days and had not a single thing to show for all that work.
“Captain—my apologies, but I was only going by our records—which are already some years out of date,” he answered, his mouth tight as his green scales on his upper lip area were as tight as could be.
He bowed even lower and then slowly raised his eyes to stare at his captain, who snorted at him in rebuke.
“Only some years is an excuse, Sub-alternate. We were here back then. We audited these three worlds and decided that they did not fit within our expansion plans so they were left for the bombing sphere ships to deal with. Records show what exactly, Sub-alternate?”
The underling nodded as his tongue flicked in and out of his reptilian-shaped mouth.
“Sir, yes—there were over two hundred of the Empire’s power stations destroyed—and each of the three planets was also virus-bombed as well. By the time our forces moved on, we had killed almost everything on the three planets, Sir,” he added.
The captain turned back to his view-screen on the far wall of the Sophon’s bridge and pointed.
“And does that look like a world that is dead to you, sub-alternate?” he said ironically.
Below, as the Sophon was hiding just off the edge of the planet’s smaller moon, the sidebar of the view-screen reported much traffic, up to a space station in low orbit. On the planet itself, as the terminator was about halfway across the globe, one could see large well-lit cities and towns—something that could not occur if the planet had been made incapable of power production.
“So either the records are wrong—or the view-screen is wrong—are those my two choices?” the captain said, as he pushed back into his seat, his scaled hide scraping along the seat’s upholstery.
The sub-alternate hated to add something else, but he knew he had to offer up one alternative, no matter what it might cost him. So he spoke up a final time.
“Sir, one other way to look at this—perhaps the people of this planet have rebuilt and repopulated their worlds quicker than we would ever expect. Sir. Perhaps, Sir,” he said, and his bow became deeper as he now stared down at the bridge deck.
That got him no response. Well, not a verbal one. He had kept his eyes were closed, and the trembling in his leg was making his robe flap.
He waited. Nothing.
He rose a bit. Nothing.
He finally opened his eyes, and the captain was staring at the view-screen quietly.
“Thank you, Sub-alternate, for your candor. Could have had your egg dissected, so I know the risk that you took with this far fetched idea. I don’t know what to believe here—I doubt seriously that the records were doctored—in other words, I believe that yes, we did kill 99.9 percent of each of these three worlds. Yet this one, and we note only this one, is back with system ships, power, cities, and almost where we found them those decades ago.”
He scratched the edge of one of his eye socket rims, where the smaller scales on a Boathi’s face met the larger scales on the side of the head, and his finger claw made a rasping sound. Boathi were notoriously itchy—it was as if the scales that covered their body just did not do well on a sphere ship. Yes, the temperature was maintained at a crisp fifty-nine degrees Celsius, and yes, there was always a directed breeze at them by the ship’s AI, but all they truly wished for was to be off ship, back in the cool jungles of their home world. But it was not to be.
The scratching rasp ended and the captain leaned over to his alternate.
“Do we have any means to end civilization on this planet? Big enough bombs or even quantity of same?” he asked, but he knew the answer.
“Sir, no, Sir. We are a raider ship—enabled with the tools to fight a space battle or raid outposts. We have little in the way of bombs, and all are smaller than would be needed to even flatten one of those human towns. Never mind a city. And as we know that these humans have system-capable ships, we are also in a degree of jeopardy too. We must maintain silence and hide ‘til we leave—we suspect that they do not have FTL as yet—but that can’t be far behind, Sir. They did have it, the records show, so it is on their list for future development—I am hoping that they’re slower at that than rebuilding their world, Sir,” he added with a hint of irony too.
The captain seemed to digest that and then nodded.
“Mark the records well then, Sub-alternate,” he said “and note their level of achievement. Send that by Ansible marked INCOMING INTEL to the Empire section. Take deep scans as well and add them—all the intel we can send will help. Search grid, please,” he said, and on screen the planet below disappeared and a grid of lines appeared on a star chart.
“Sub-alternate, you can update, please,” he said, and the rasp of a claw on a scale on the back of one of his hands could now be heard.
“Sir, yes—the ship we are searching for—this Drake explorer ship—punched out in FTL for twenty light years only from where we found them in the asteroid field,” he explained.
On screen, an amber circle appeared around nine stars from the center of that chart, the asteroid field.
“We have now searched for them within three systems, and they are not to be found as yet. We have”—a small red circle appeared around the remaining five systems that all lay within those twenty light years—“onl
y five more to look at. We will find them, Sir,” the sub-alternate said, and he meant it.
On screen, the red circle with the five systems in it was expanded, and one of those systems was a double star too.
“Let’s try the double next,” the captain said and nodded to the sub-alternate to engage as the sphere ship jumped to FTL and was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
“Easy, take it easy,” Roger said, as he walked carefully down the exact center of the street. Ahead of him were three of those pseudo-smart zombies—the ones that he thought were a complete waste of a bite. They seemed to not understand that being close to something that sat at the side of the street might mean it was hiding something that might want to hurt you. But then again, as he knew, these zombies knew no fear. Eat or be eaten was their mantra—and even biting one to increase their mental abilities didn’t seem to fix some of their habits.
He forgot about them as they rounded the corner, and ahead sat those six smoking oil drums and the hole in the street too. No awning cover so he imagined it had gone in when some—hey, wait a minute. The ladder was inside the pit. Someone had helped out someone else, he thought .
Up at the edge, he peered over and saw just the three bodies from before. Nothing else.
He looked at one of those other zombies and said, “Andrew—climb down and bring up those bodies. No eating either ‘til the pit is empty—and don’t forget the awning cover either.”
Andrew scurried to comply. Up and down he went, carrying first one and then the other two bodies up and out of the pit.
Roger asked, “Are you sure that there were no other bodies down there?”
Andrew and the other zombie were staring at the bodies. Not much there for a meal, Roger thought, but then he didn’t think they cared.
“No one else—no other bodies,” Andrew said as his hands went out to the closest body.
Roger turned away as the two ate; watching jaws and teeth rip into a calf or tear a lip away from a face was not something he enjoyed watching, and he waited until the two had gorged themselves.