"The audacity of the man." Wilmington leapt to his feet.
"Sir?"
"All right, inform my executive committee that I'll want four of them to accompany me to the general's office, now."
"I beg your pardon, sir, but that can only exacerbate the situation. The more considered option would be to—"
"Damn it, Indra, just do what the hell I tell you. Now…I want you to ensure that communications with those outside the compound are disabled. Whatever it is they are up to, I don't want them talking to Steinherz."
○O○
Kathy consulted her internal chronometer which caused her to consider the acronym BMNT. It was a rather antiquated military term meaning Before Morning Nautical Twilight. That time of morning prior to actual sunrise when the sun is still twelve degrees below the horizon. Generally, it was a time of morning when there was just sufficient light to conduct operations. Of course, darkness on Earth had not been a hindrance to military operations for a very long time.
BMNT was now used only as a road mark, a point in time from which to measure.
Kathy's element arrived two kilometers north of the clinic fifty-five minutes prior to BMNT. She established her security and then, with her recon team, was preparing to move forward when Dave stopped her.
"Kathy," he implored her, "you should stay behind with the HQ section and let me lead this recon."
"Maybe next time, Dave."
"Kathy…what if you should be—"
"Then as XO, you pick up and continue the mission."
"Kathy, I—"
"Yes, Dave?"
"Just…be careful."
"Don't worry, Dave, this is a piece of cake."
"A comment like that could jinx things."
"I'm not superstitious. I'll keep in touch over our COMde's. This won't take long."
Kathy and ten other SUBs went forward to a heavily forested hill whose southern half had crumbled away over an eon ago. The precipice left behind was a perfect place from which to observe the clinic.
She was amazed at what she saw. Below them was a valley between three very steep hills. Through it ran a small river that emptied into a lake two kilometers to the west.
Stretching between the sides of these three hills, and covering the installation below, was a massive camouflage membrane comprised of a thin sheet of photo-generative material that would make the view from above, say from a satellite or aircraft, look like just another empty valley thus hiding the clinic and the ruins of the E'meset city that surrounded it.
The clinic was a large, rectangular building about a hundred and forty thousand square meters. Adjacent to it, to its west, was a fence made of what appeared to be barbed wire, surrounding a compound with a number of rectangular buildings constructed in sets, and laid out in two columns. There was a total of sixty of these structures. Along the fence were towers, not unlike the towers around New Roanoke.
There was an unimproved road entering the compound from the east, and another from the west.
Inside the fenced area were a large number of Indigs. Kathy zoomed in for a better look. The Indigs were quite tall; Cassie later informed her that their height was a result of the lower gravity here. Kathy could not tell just how tall, as there was nothing to compare them to. They were thin, with long, thin arms and legs. It was, however, the skin of their bodies that first grabbed her attention. Each individual, men, women, and children seemed to have painted themselves in bright colors. She saw reds, yellows, orange, greens, and all quite vibrant. Their hair was uniform silvery blond, long and straight. The females decorated their hair with feathers, flowers and other ornaments. The men all wore theirs up and either on top or on the rear of their heads.
It was obvious these people were dejected and unhappy by their slow, despondent deportment. Kathy remembered her own illness. She, too, had been dejected and unhappy at the prospect of facing a painful treatment, the outcome of which was not a guarantee of survival.
Kathy turned to Mitch and Cassie who lay concealed at her side. "These people are here to undergo a treatment for whatever ailment it is we gave them?"
"Yes. The IIEA, of course, does not advertise the clinic or tell of the reason for its existence. You can see how embarrassing that would be," Mitch added.
"What's the illness?"
Cassie scooted a little nearer and whispered, "It is apparently an acute infectious disease caused by a member of the orthomyxovirus family that has, in this alien environment, mutated into something altogether unknown to our medicine. The IIEA has been studying it since it was concluded that the E'meset were suffering from it. The IIEA has developed a treatment which they have kept a secret."
"By whose orders is this treatment kept secret?" Kathy asked.
"One must assume the highest levels of the IIEA," Mitch replied.
"Embarrassing, you said?" Kathy was clearly angry. "This is outrageous!"
During continued observation, they counted 346 armed guards. They assumed a like number off duty. They counted twenty-three vehicles; assuming two operators each at a minimum, and a maintenance crew of sufficient size to support the vehicles plus the medical, and scientific staff, the administrative staff, and quite possibly a separate security element. There could be two thousand to twenty-five hundred people here.
Though the compound was fenced, and heavily guarded, the clinic itself was not, and there was no obvious guard presence on or around the clinic. In short, they sat ready to keep those inside in—not to keep those outside from getting in. Nonetheless there were a lot of armed people down there.
"Do these rainbow people know this is a clinic where we are trying to help them?" Kathy asked.
"They know it's a clinic," Cassie responded.
"Cassie, take a hard look. It more closely resembles a concentration camp down there than a clinic."
"The Indigenous people no longer trust us, so they must be coerced in, and then kept there against their will. This is for their own good, and necessary to save their race."
The red sun had been up for about two hours when Kathy gave the order to return to the rally point. She was just about to leave when she noticed a maintenance crew on the flat roof of the clinic working at the base of the antenna array. She took a hard, close-up look at the base of the antenna, and there it was, a horizontal door on the roof, close to the base of the array. And the fact that they were working on the antennas led her to suspect that they, too, were experiencing a coms loss with the colony.
○O○
At New Roanoke, about one hour BMNT, Chuck reported to the general, "Sir, we completely lost contact with Sel's SUBs at 04:08 hours. We tried to work through it, but couldn't."
"Yes, Sergeant Alistair, I got that report at 04:15."
"Sir, we have determined that we are being jammed, and the jamming is coming from within New Roanoke."
"Wilmington," the general mumbled.
○O○
At BMNT plus one hour, Mr. Wilmington received word that no Ismay communications had been getting out of New Roanoke since he was first informed of the unauthorized team that had gone through the wall.
"Indra!" Wilmington screamed over Ismay. "You shut off all outgoing Ismay communications?"
"Sir, you ordered me to ensure that communications with those outside the city's security walls were disabled. I instantly put your orders into effect."
"So, my warning to the clinic was not received?"
"Given that you did not send that warning through me, no, it was not received."
"And if we send it now?"
"There is an eighty-nine percent chance it will be intercepted."
"Dammit!"
○O○
The intel Kathy had gathered was absolutely necessary to allow General Steinherz to consider his next move and formulate a plan. Kathy understood that they were going to have to determine exactly what was happening inside the clinic, just what it was that was being secretly shipped back to Earth, and who was involved. If this secret
turned out to be something illegal, there would be trouble. The CDF was, after all, the law here. It might become necessary to force entry into this 'clinic'…with its armed guards.
The hidden fear was that nothing untoward was occurring at all, and that the explanation given was the truth. If the CDF's conclusions were wrong, then they were acting without authorization, and exceeding their authority. The general, however, was convinced, and so was Kathy. "Besides," she asked herself, "why the big secret?"
Kathy's mission now was to get the information back to the general. Her report and visual record were transmitted to all the SUBs by making brief contact with all their left hands. This would greatly increase the mission's probability of success, as only one SUB need make it back alive.
This was just a precaution, Kathy told herself. They had made it here, at night, and with but one causality. As far as she knew they were yet undetected by the IIEA, and not yet a target of the Indigs. There was no reason to believe they would not make it back during daylight.
As they headed back toward New Roanoke, Kathy took the time to take in her surroundings. The trees were unusual to say the least. Their trunks ranged from three to seven meters in diameter. And they were tall; averaging thirty to forty meters but a few were even taller at sixty to seventy meters. Their tops flared out and their branches seemed to weave together. The trunks of these trees were an array of shadowy colors. She saw gray, purplish gray, silver gray, and dark blue. Some were so dark they appeared black. The leaves, too, were shades of gray, blue, purple, and black. They were generally broad and oval, with some coming to a point.
Looking up, Kathy noticed, some meters under the canopy, in a layer that sees little sunlight, some odd plants that must be parasitic in nature. These plants attach to the trunks of the trees high up and sprout enormous leaves in an attempt to grab the remaining light.
On the trunks of the trees and on the rocks grew moss and lichen with colors that spanned the spectrum from light blue to orange.
The forest floor contained few plants-various hardy species with huge flat leaves of black trimmed in blue. There were leaves that grew from squat, round protuberances on the sides of great root-like structures that were only partially buried in the ground. Wherever they broke the surface, these broad-leafed plants would erupt.
Of the many strange plants on the forest floor, those that had learned to survive without the sun's light by becoming carnivorous where the most interesting to Kathy.
One plant that captured Kathy's attention resembled a large, black lily. When it had devoured enough flying insects and grown so huge that its stem can no longer support the weight of the bloom, the flower laid over on its side. The open bloom emitted an odor like carrion, and when scavengers ventured inside to partake of the feast, thousands of long, thin, quill-like thorns arose from their hidden positions all around the interior of the flower, trapping the creature inside. Then, the plant excreted digestive juices and slowly absorbed the animal. Bones and all.
Some of these botanical nightmares had grown large enough to consume a human.
In places, the ground was covered in grasses of a burnt orange color and rather large lichen growths in shades of cyan.
Generally, the ground under the trees was easy to traverse. The Infantrymen who had served in Oceania commented on the ease of travel as compared to the jungles and swamps found in the southeast pacific.
The woods were alive with the sounds of the vast multitudes of life, both animal and insect.
The trek back in daylight was not nearly as intense as the journey out in the darkness, not that it was less perilous, but the light of the red sun contributed to a confidence that perhaps was not warranted. Kathy was aware of this, and over her COMde warned the members of the patrol. "Keep sharp people, this is no stroll through the park."
Forty minutes after this, Kathy got a call from Dave with the rear guard. "Charlie Oscar, this X-ray Oscar, over."
"Yes, Dave, what have you got?"
"Um…yeah…ah, Kathy I have something really big chasing something really small in the valley to our immediate east at our four o'clock. It's at about 2200 meters and closing."
"Do you still have Private Zolna and his AT-88 missile launcher?"
"I sure do."
"Take him and go see if you can convince the something big to take another route."
With excitement in his voice, Dave responded, "Roger that, I am Oscar Mike."
○O○
Dave grabbed Private Zolna and pulled him to the edge of the wood line, to the very side of the hill. "Private, do you see where the trees seem to be falling over as something crashes through them?"
"Yes, sir, what is it?"
"It's big. Let's go scare it back where it came from."
"Sir, I think I can shoot it from here!"
"We're way out of range, follow me."
As they ran down the steep, bare hillside toward the unknown behemoth, Zolna decided the major needed to know both his opinion and his situation, "Sir, shooting monsters on an alien world is not what I signed up for. I'm a cybertronics sub-systems specialist."
"First, you are also an infantryman. Second, you're not going to shoot it Private; we are only going to scare it away."
They had departed the forest, run down a bare hillside, and were now running across a large clearing filled with that orange grass, much taller here than in the woods. Here, it came up nearly to their knees. They reached a mound on the south edge of the clearing. They were 150 meters from the western woods where Dave estimated the thing would appear if it maintained its course. From here, they would be looking right at its left flank.
Private Zolna and his AT-88 set up behind the small mound with Dave right next to him. "When it is visually in line with that blue tree with the orange trunk on the other side, right…there…I want you to put a round into the ground about fifty meters in front of it. Fire far enough ahead of it that it won't run into your round."
"Sir, this is crazy." Private Zolna protested. "That thing is knocking giant trees down like they're tooth picks. We're gonna get killed."
"Calm down, soldier, you'll be fine. If we don't turn it around, it'll run right up on the patrol."
The sound of the beast crushing through the trees was becoming so loud they would not have been able to hear each other speak. Fortunately, they were not communicating in that quaint fashion.
Their eyes were fixed on a spot in the tree line to their right awaiting the appearance of this monster.
A movement caught Dave's attention just at the spot where they expected this massive animal to pop out of the woods, but instead, there appeared a small, thin boy who had been painted several loud colors. Dave quickly magnified his vision to get a better look.
The boy looked to be ten to twelve years old. He was dressed in a highly decorated loincloth and wore both leggings and wristbands, also decorated. On his head was a sort of helmet made to look like an animal's head. The boy's face was visible through the helmet's open mouth. The boy wore a great many very colorful feathers as well. In his left hand, he carried what looked like a cricket bat, the edges of which were studded with long, black stones.
The youth was running for all he was worth and glancing over his shoulder. That's when the noise reached a crescendo, and the trees on the edge of the wood line, right behind the boy, seemed to explode in a cloud of millions of blue and black leaves.
Splintered wood, branches, and large pieces of tree trunk went hurtling through the air.
This creature was huge. Perhaps eighteen meters long. On Earth, it would have weighed in somewhere around thirty-five thousand kilos…still over thirty-one thousand here.
Its head was blunt, like that of a sperm whale, but with a much larger mouth, full of spiked teeth. Its tongue acted like a tentacle that reached out to grab its prey. The end of this tongue had four digits, each tipped with a retractable claw. The thing had four thick, short legs; each ended in a stubby foot with four short toes capped with
a toenail that must have been as thick and hard as armor. The creature's blunt head was heavily scarred from years of crashing through the forest.
Now free of the encumbering trees, the beast put on a burst of speed and headed fast for the boy.
The creature let out a bellow which brought the two soldiers out of their shocked trance.
"Zolna, you have your target, lead by five zero mikes."
Zolna brought the sight up to his eye and announced "Identified!"
"Fire!" Dave shouted.
"On the way!" Zolna pulled the trigger. The missile streaked across the clearing striking the ground exactly where Dave wanted it. The resulting explosion was impressive; the concussion and shell fragments struck the creature right in the face. It stopped and bellowed again as it shook off the effects of the detonation. The missile left a heat trail through the air that the creature could see. Its gaze followed this trail through the air right to the location where the two men lay. It saw their glowing heads and turned to face them.
"Zolna," Dave asked, slowly, "are those more rounds for that thing on your back?"
"Oh, shit, I knew it! Reloading now!"
"Hurry!"
The huge beast charged full speed at them causing the ground to tremble.
"Zolna, you are cleared to fire at will!"
"Gee, thanks, sir!" The private shouldered the launcher and shouted "On the—" His voice was drowned out by the launching of the missile. Both men ducked. The explosion sounded oddly muffled this time.
Almost instantly, pieces of meat and blood rained down on them…and then, silence. Rising up, Dave saw the beast lying dead on its right side, only twenty meters away. From a great crater, right in the center of its massive forehead, poured a river of blood, and smoke lazily drifted upward out of it.
Dave stood up, patting Zolna on the shoulder. "Good shootin’," he commented quietly. Looking about the field, Dave saw the feathers from the boy's headdress sticking up above the ocher- and black-colored foliage. He jumped over the mound and ran forward, shouting back at Zolna, "Come on!"
Reaching the boy, Dave saw blood flowing from a wound on his upper left forehead. Just like a head wound on a human, it was bleeding a great deal.
The Vampires of Antyllus Page 12