Dark Planet

by Charles W. Sasser

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R

  ELEVEN

  DAY ONE

  Once slung past the two moons and into orbit around Aldenia, we had two Galaxia days aboard the Stealth before we established the correct angle and transferred to the pod for entry. Entertainment packages aboard the ship provided diversion, as there was little actual flying to do and duties were minimal. Gun Maid and Gorilla read books, real paper books with covers, while Atlas and Ferret were partial to holographic games involving miniature soldiers and bots, ground armor and space ships engaged in bloody battle with lots of shooting and screaming. Captain Amalfi and Sergeant Shiva, the team’s leadership, had more to do and kept themselves occupied with planning and cross-planning. Blade made me nervous, his suspicious nature further fed by the relayed warning from the wretched Lieutenant Snork. Every time I attempted to read his emotions, to sample his thought patterns and thus forearm myself, it was like he felt me probing and slammed the door shut so hard in my face that it left me feeling bruised inside my head.

  He would look up in a glare and growl, “Fu-uck.”

  The others said Blade was too mean to breed, so the next best thing for him were his weapons. He spent hours with the sniper rifle, caressing it, ministering to this high point of infantry technology. With the M-235 Gauss he could punch ten rounds into the X-ring at one thousand meters as fast as he could squeeze the trigger, using the iron sights, too, instead of the weapon’s holographic. Then he would back off two thousand meters and do it again. On the day I was introduced to the team, Blade had just won a hundred credits in a bet with Atlas on the firing range. Ferret had gone to Blade’s target and, in amazement, placed a single thumb over the entire pattern; the rounds had struck that close together to tear out the man-target’s tiny heart.

  Sergeant Gunduli — it seemed ludicrous to call such a pleasing creature Gun Maid — maintained vigilance in front of a bank of radio and crypto equipment while she read her books.

  “Apparently, the Blobs are either under tactical radio silence, they have systems I can’t penetrate, or they use telepathy for even long range and intergalactic communications,” she reported to Captain Amalfi.

  “There’s one further option,” Gorilla noted.

  “What’s that?” Captain Amalfi asked.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  Captain Amalfi shook his head. “Energy emissions picked up by sensor bots before they vanished during the previous recon may or may not have originated from Blobs,” he cautioned, “but this we do know: there is something there, whether it be free colonizers, pirates, or even another unknown species. The Republic leadership is betting on Blobs and that’s good enough for me. Sergeant Kadar?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Are you receiving anything from the planet?”

  “Am I receiving any ‘vibes?’” I could get into this Human lingo with practice. “Negative,” I amended quickly when I saw the Captain unimpressed. “I don’t do intergalactic telepathy. I have to at least be on the same planet with a source.”

  “Humph! Keep trying, Sergeant Gunduli.”

  “Yes, sir. There’s … I don’t know …”

  “What?” Captain Amalfi prompted impatiently.

  She looked puzzled. “I … it’s a feeling …”

  “Leave the feeling to Sergeant Kadar. Stick with the comma.”

  “I’ll keep running the bands, even in alternate time bands.”

  The crew became edgy, a condition that grew with the passage of relatively idle hours. It was like edginess recycled through the ship’s rebreather system. My ears twitched. I sensed general hostility, like one detected noxious gas issuing from a contaminated spring. I noticed it first in Gun Maid when I thought to ask if she and Atlas were a breeding pair. I stumbled and pawed around the words, trying to get the question out, until sudden ice blocked all mental contact with her.

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” she flared, which I took to be an old, old Earth expression meaning shut up, it’s none of your business.

  Curiosity was a common Zentadon trait that, I understood, could sometimes kill the cat.

  Next, it was Captain Amalfi and Sergeant Shiva.

  “Team Sergeant?” The Captain’s voice rose uncharacteristically. “Team Sergeant?”

  The scarred old NCO battle horse slowly came to attention. The snap was gone. “What do you want?”

  “In two days, Sergeant Shiva, in less than two days, this team may be in battle with the Blobs.”

  “We’re the Blobs’ worst nightmare.”

  “Shiva, these DRT-bags are slow, they’re sloppy, their breath stinks and they don’t love Jesus. Do you catch my drift?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I want these soldiers whipped into shape, Team Sergeant. Now, do you catch my drift?”

  “What do you suggest, Captain? Double-time them around the bridge?”

  “Your sarcasm is unappreciated, Team Sergeant.”

  “I’ll whip them into shape, Captain.”

  “Very well.” That seemed to satisfy him.

  I tried to pass the atmosphere off as pre-insertion jitters. DRTs were, after all, superb soldiers, the elite Special Forces of the Galaxia Republic. They were focused and ready, like gladiators about to enter the coliseum. They were, well, edged.

  But there was more to it than that. I cautiously explored my team members’ brains and emotions, using my special Talent, and found aggression and suspicion, much more than before, along with little black worms of fear and unspecified anxieties. Since they had not been that way pre-orbit, I assumed it had something to do with Aldenia. While I ate, I studied the Dark Planet on the view screen, trying to figure out what there was about it that could cause such a sudden transformation. Lightning boils in the dark crust popped and flickered.

  I picked at my food, since I utilized very little energy while inactive in orbit. Special rations had been prepared and packed for me: water vine, a type of lichen, and other plants. Zentadon were once exceptional predators, but that was in the distant past. I now found it disgusting the way Blade and Gorilla, and even Sergeant Shiva gorged themselves on the near-raw flesh of the mammoth Galaxia quadropod. Indowy and Zentadon had reformed basic aggressive traits in our genetic signatures. Because of taa, the killing and eating of meat could even be dangerous to us.

  “Are you occupied?” Sergeant Shiva asked gruffly. “You aren’t meditating again or something?”

  I set aside my plate, the nuked plants half-eaten. Children in China, wherever that was, were probably starving. “I am listening for Blobs,” I said.

  “You can hear them?”

  “Mostly I hear inside myself.”

  “With myself” was the best conversation I could expect while attached to DRT-213.

  Grumpy and out of sorts like everyone else, Sergeant Shiva took the seat next to me in front of the viewscreen. He was a huge man, even sitting. The scar jagging down his cheek appeared etched in relief. He apparently had something to say.

  “That is one ugly ball of dung,” he said, indicating Aldenia.

  I couldn’t quarrel with that. I waited.

  “Shit!” he said. He got up in exasperation, walked around the seat and sat down again. “Okay, let’s get it over with. Call this your leadership briefing, although you ain’t ever going to need it if there’s anything the Captain and I can do about it. This is just in case he and I and Sergeant Gunduli all get it. If that happens, you’re fourth in the chain of command, behind Gun Maid and before Gorilla. The chain of command goes like this: the Captain, me, Gun Maid, you, Gorilla, Blade, Ferret and Atlas, in that order.”

  “I am a specialist, Team Sergeant, and a Zentadon. Zentadon specialists normally do not assume leadership positions. Besides, I know I’m not trusted.”

  “Maybe specialists ain’t leaders in that pissy-pansy school you came from,” he growled, “but that don’t apply in the teams. It is your rank that counts here, and that makes you fourth. You will be in charge and damned well
better act like it, else Blade and the others will chew you up and spit out your heart.”

  “Is that a warning or an order?”

  “Both. There’s a couple of reasons you need to know this. This pod is programmed to return to the Stealth in exactly nine days, starting from today, whether any of us return with it or not. Nine days is what we have to recon the Blobs and get back. We’ll make reports to the pod’s computers every day so higher-higher gets the intel whether we get chewed up or what.”

  “And the other reason is?”

  “The chain of command is also programmed into the pod’s memory system. Its combat tacs keep track of the living and the dead. The pod will take off before the nine days are up only upon orders from the senior living team member. As long as the senior man is alive, no subordinate can even enter the pod. Understand?”

  “But the senior man can take off without his subordinates?”

  “Any leader who would do that is a lowdown dirty sonofabitch. If you are in charge, you will leave no one alive behind. Understand?”

  “Not even Blade?”

  He glared at me. That was supposed to be a joke.

  “The others will also be informed of the procedure,” he said.

  “So they can keep an eye on me?”

  “That’s my job. If you fuck up, I’ll make sure you never have a chance to take command. Blade won’t have to do anything. Don’t even think of mind-talking to the Blobs.”

  “Why would I do that, Team Sergeant, when we have such stimulating conversations among ourselves?”

  As for Blade, his unblinking, indecipherable stare dogged my every movement. His hostility toward me became palpable. You didn’t have to be a Sen to feel it.

  “Elf?” he said, cornering me.

  “My name is Kadar San.”

  “Elf, is it true that taa camps weren’t the only Indowy construction on Aldenia?”

  “Don’t you know? You were there.”

  “Don’t be a wise ass, elf.” He sneered at me. “This is going to be a long mission. Anything can happen.”

  I sighed and said, to keep peace in the family, “It was centuries ago that the Indowy were here.”

  “True, but always something remains. For example, the spawn of human whores and tailed monkey-elves, like yourself. If I were a woman, I would rather screw a dog or an ape as a Zentadon.”

  “I am sure you would.”

  He wasn’t listening.

  “The Indowy built experimental research and development laboratories on Aldenia,” he stated. “A man could get rich if he stumbled onto some of that stuff.”

  “Greed precedes the fall.”

  He looked like he wanted to twist off my head.

  “It is an old, old Earth expression,” I said.

  Maid, who overheard, later found the opportunity to caution me. “Blade can be a dangerous man. Don’t deliberately provoke him, Kadar San.”

  “It does not have to be deliberate.”

  Atlas, wearing a disapproving look, snatched her out of my presence and piloted her into the ship’s bay where I saw them in heated argument. Whatever was happening on the ship was affecting everyone. I felt like I might chew off my own arm but for the Zentadon control I exercised over myself.

  I targeted the planet through the viewscreen with the full force of my concentration, which was considerable, and scrubbed the atmosphere telepathically. As far as I could tell, there was simply nothing there. Except, I still experienced a feeling of menace, of …

  “Evil,” Maid said over my shoulder. I gave a start. I had been so focused that I hadn’t felt her approach.

  “You did not give me a penny for my thoughts,” I scolded mildly.

  “But that was what you were thinking, Sergeant Kadar.”

  “I thought Humans abandoned concepts of good and evil once they discovered the vastness of space and found no God living there.”

  “Not all Humans.”

  She watched the viewscreen with me. Lightning storms popped and erupted on the forbidding surface.

  “Have you picked up something?” I asked her presently, sensing how troubled she was. “A signal?”

  She frowned. She sat down next to me in front of the screen and lowered her voice.

  “I don’t get anything from it except silence.” Her voice cracked with strain. “What does it mean? Our listening devices can hear the footfalls of an ant crawling across the surface of a moon. We should be able to comb something from the planet — atmospheric disturbances, electrical energies, force fields, something. We should be listening to all that lightning, if nothing else. Our gear is designed to sniff out any disturbances. Yet, it’s as though we are flying through a tunnel …”

  “We are being jammed. Is that the term?”

  She nodded, still focusing on the screen. I felt her shudder where her shoulder touched mine.

  “You’ve surely noticed how everyone’s started to change since we went into orbit,” she said. “It’s almost like the atmosphere from Aldenia is permeating the screen into the ship, isn’t it? The feeling I get is of something dark and …” She couldn’t think of a more appropriate word. “… and evil.”

  That was, I agreed, the right word for the Dark Planet.

  “Sergeant Kadar, why did your people and the Indowy abandon Aldenia after you had colonized it?”

  “We did not colonize it,” I corrected. “The Indowy colonized it and brought Zentadon here.”

  “I stand corrected,” she snapped, then caught herself. “The Group Commander during mission briefing said something about taa camps. What was he talking about, Kadar San?”

  I hesitated. The mere mention of taa frightened Humans.

  “Surges of taa produced by the Zentadon endocrine system can bring about a physical and mental transformation,” I said, speaking from personal experience after the night of the attempted sabotage. “In this stage, Zentadon are capable of what you Humans call super strength and abilities.”

  “I remember when I was a little girl and my great-great grandfather was more than a hundred years old,” Maid interrupted, reflecting. “He told stories about the early years of colonization and exploration. He told one of the stories as a warning whenever the children were unruly and needed straightening out. Sort of like, the boogie man will get you if you don’t behave. It was about how his great-great grandfather fought in the Revolution. He saw Zentadon soldiers wipe out one of our colonies. He described them as looking like devils with their green or purple eyes and their tails. They moved with such incredible speed that they were like flitting shadows, unable to be seen except the way you see a bird out of the corner of your eye before it disappears. They actually exploded buildings with only the collective energy of their minds. They shredded flesh off Humans and ate it. I …”

  She looked pale beneath her brown skin.

  “It is little wonder that Humans are suspicious of Zentadon,” I commiserated.

  “The story is true?”

  It was suddenly important to me that I make her understand.

  “The Indowy through their technology developed means of inducing taa in Zentadon at their will and thus controlling us by it,” I said. “Zentadon are inherently peaceful people. We were captured in large numbers and interned in camps under the most horrid conditions. The camps were run like animal breeding and experimental stations. Hundreds of thousands of us died — as many as twenty million. All to satisfy the Indowy quest for super soldiers to be used to conquer the galaxy and enslave the Humans and other sentients to a cartel of madmen who ruled the Indowy at that period.”

  “The camps were here, on Aldenia?”

  “Hundreds of them, all over the planet, along with various war research laboratories and factories. There was one unforeseen consequence of the taa scheme, however. Taa in sufficient quantities released into our systems may produce a condition known as lintatai, which can destroy us very quickly. Lintatai may occur in two ways. A Zentadon goes into a fugue state of mind during which
he will neither eat nor sleep. He will not do anything unless ordered, and then only as a zombie reaction. He burns out on the inside and slowly withers, useless to himself and everyone else until he dies.”

  Maid shivered. “How awful. And the other way?”

  “The Indowy wanted to build super soldiers based on the control of taa. And they did. The downside was that we literally burn up from the inside out with all that energy. Prolonged overdoses cause us to go into acute lintatai and explode from the inside, to spontaneously combust into flames.”

  “Like one of the saboteurs did?”

  I shot a glance at her.

  “I was told about it,” she quickly explained. “Is that why the Zentadon are so comparatively few today?”

  “The Indowy had to keep replacing Zentadon with fresh captives, running us through the camps by the millions. If we survived the camps, not many of us survived the taa rushes imposed upon us in combat. Soon, so few of us remained that you Humans were able to … Well, the Great Revolution succeeded. Humans have recorded it in your histories, from your point of view.”

  Maid looked horrified. She stared at Aldenia with new intensity.

  “It is an evil place,” she whispered. “Is that why it was abandoned.”

  “It is said that the malevolent spirits of the Indowy butchers and the Zentadon who collaborated with them are trapped and isolated in the darkness of the planet. That no one who goes there survives it.”

  “DRT-418 and DRT-420 did not return,” Maid pointed out, turning toward me. “But Blade went and returned several years ago.”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you believe there are evil spirits, Kadar San?”

  “Are there not stranger things on Earth and in Heaven, to coin an old, old Earth expression?”

  “I believe that in everything there are opposites,” she said. “For your right hand, there is a left. For the darkness, there is light. For every evil there is goodness.”

  I nodded. “The universe is kept in balance through opposites.”

  “How do you explain the Blobs? Are they somehow immune to the planet? Are they stronger than evil? They can’t be the counterbalance to it.”