“What do you want us to do?” asked Subcommander Kharl, young for his rank.
Aren’t we all? But that was what happened in a war that lasted generations, especially against the Sybrans and their damned United Faith Alliance, although he had to admire their ability. What he didn’t understand was how a culture like that of the Sybrans that was based almost totally on personal combat and weapons skills had a workable economic system. And they have the nerve to call themselves “angels.”
“I’ll take one of the groundscouts out there myself with a half squad of combat techs … and the best comm unit we have left.” The groundscouts were rechargeable lightly armored personnel carriers, not designed for combat, but certainly well-enough protected against local fauna, especially with a top-turret gunner able to direct osmiridium expanding shells in a complete circle around the vehicle. The other advantage of the groundscout was that, under the apparently freakish laws of physics or nature that applied on the planet, they held their charges a good ten times longer than they should have.
One of the few areas where local conditions are working for us.
“Ser, that’s three days close to nonstop. Maybe more if there are problems with the road.”
“I know, but I think it’s time for an on-site inspection.” Besides which, it will be easier than waiting here without comm while Keif breathes down my neck. “I haven’t been out there, and I need to see what the problems are. Besides, everything here is going as well as it can, and Commander A’Kien is perfectly able to do anything I could do.” And it won’t hurt to get away from sewers, water lines, reviewing decisions on what gets built where by whom … all of it, especially arguing with Keif. He almost laughed. A’Kien thought that what Kiedral did was so easy. Let him see for himself, especially with all the useless micromanaging from Keif. “I’ll leave a delegation order for him. And a message for the marshal telling him that I’m personally inspecting. How soon can we leave?”
“I’ll have the groundscout and combat techs ready in half an hour, ser. Will you need to get your gear?”
“I’ve got a kit bag here.”
“Yes, ser. I’ll let you know.”
Kiedral nodded and settled behind the table, picking up the tablet that displayed the latest status reports on the various building projects, nodding as he noted that all the initial sewer mains had been laid and that the biotechs were seeding the modified water lilies and adapted biosphere to deal with wastes before releasing them into the river over the stone sluices designed to give the water a last dose of sunlight.
The bay formed a naturally protected harbor, and the land to the north and east of the river was on solid bedrock that sloped gradually uphill in a way that would allow expansion over the years as the city, and the colony, grew. The same bedrock underlay the land on the west side of the river, but a bridge across it could wait.
At present, while a street system had been laid out, all of the colonists remained in the temporary plastfoam barracks, although most of them had opted to build their own quarters on streets that, except for the buried waste collection and water systems, were still little more than packed dirt and clay tracks. They were allowed to sign out equipment on a rotating basis, and some dwellings actually had stone walls that were close to chest-high, although the engineers were using the fusactor-powered lasers most of the time to cut stone in order to shelter the fusactors from the weather, creating what looked like white stone towers.
Kiedral had to admit that the stone, something like a cross between alabaster and limestone, except harder, made not only an excellent building material, but an attractive one as well, and there was certainly plenty of it in the hills to the east of the harbor.
He frowned as he studied the second report on the tablet, the last one from the eastern terraforming team. The team had crossed the hills to the east and was reshaping the land bordering the road into gentler contours, as much as they could with the earthdozers, and cutting back the strange forest. They reported the loss of one laser-tech, who had been killed by a creature that was black like an extinct Terran panther, but larger than either the equally extinct tiger or a lion.
What sort of biosphere supports a predator that large? What does it prey on? He used his light stylus to note the question, but he had to concentrate on doing so, as if the device did not want to work unless he was focused on it. Something else to go wrong.
With all the reports and details, as well as the message to the marshal, with whom he avoided talking any more than absolutely necessary, it only seemed a few minutes before Subcommander Kharl announced, “Ser, the groundscout is here.”
“Good.” Kiedral flicked his index finger over the tablet, putting it on standby, then stood, pulled the kit bag from under the table, and hurried out of the dome. There was little sense in taking the tablet. The netlink barely covered the area planned for the town that he hoped would one day be a city.
Standing outside the dome, he studied the combat techs as they filed into the rear of the groundscout, six men and a woman. The woman had brilliant red hair, if cut short, a particular shade that had appeared after the strange ship translation among a handful of officers, crew, and even colonists. There was something about her …
As if she had sensed his eyes on her, she turned and looked at him, if but for an instant, far too short a period for such a look to be termed either unprofessional or disrespectful, yet Kiedral had the feeling that he’d been assessed and weighed in some fashion.
Ridiculous! She barely passed her eyes over you. But that bothered him slightly, too, he had to admit. After all, he was second in command of the colonization force, and the actual force behind most of what had been accomplished.
“Ser?”
At Kharl’s voice, Kiedral turned. “Yes.”
Kharl handed him a slip of paper, only a slip, since paper was getting scarce. “Those are the techs and the driver.”
“Thank you.” Kiedral smiled, glad that the subcommander had covered for him. Kharl knew that Kiedral made a habit of addressing subordinates by name.
He slipped into the seat beside the driver, also a combat tech, and closed the hatch, immediately lowering the glastic window because of the heat built up inside the groundscout. Given the distance they had to cover, using the cooling system was out.
“The techs are loaded, ser,” said the driver.
“Take the way along the main east-west avenue.” Kiedral wanted to see how work was progressing on the main power complex. He’d feel happier, he knew, once the fusactors were all shielded in stone. No matter what the engineers said about altered anomalous-metal containment, anything that had once been transformed could be altered again—and much already had been a second time by the freak translation.
“Yes, ser.” The driver turned the groundscout back toward the center of what would soon be, Kiedral was convinced, a well-planned and thriving town from which the colonists could extend their efforts to convert a wilderness into a thriving nation capable of adding its capabilities to the rest of the Unity.
Kiedral scanned the roster.
Thaeron, Tech2, squad leader
Baeltyn, Tech4
Fhostah, Tech3, driver
Gorran, Tech3
Jaslak, Tech4
Ryaelth, Tech3
Zhalert, Tech4
Alphabetical, except for the squad leader, and not by rank, but easier to recall that way. Kiedral suspected that Tech Ryaelth was the woman, but he’d find out sooner or later. He eased the slip into his summer uniform coveralls, which, light as they were, still felt far too warm most of the time.
As the groundscout moved onto the avenue—the only thoroughfare paved from one end to the other thus far—Kiedral’s eyes moved from the largely completed stone walls of what would be the operations and administrative center to the plaza some hundred meters seaward from the building. The plaza was so far merely a paved circular space, with a smaller raised circular paved area in the center. The groundscout was, of course, t
he only vehicle on the avenue as it circled the plaza and then continued eastward.
Kiedral had insisted on having the center plaza paved, with the beginning of all the avenues and boulevards started in stone, to give the colonists the immediate idea that the dirt streets were only temporary necessities to lead to the fields beyond the staked boundaries of the township, and that before long the remaining main thoroughfares, at least, would be paved in that tough white stone that held the faintest tinge of green.
A half kay east of the plaza rose the stoneworks surrounding the fusactors, all looking shorter than they were, because Kiedral had insisted that the ground be cleared down to bare rock, and the rock fused solid. He nodded. To the eye the stonework looked finished, although he knew it was still a few weeks from completion. If nothing else goes wrong … which it will.
When the groundscout reached the edge of the cultivated fields, Kiedral could hear the squad leader’s voice from the aft compartment. “Zhalert, you got the turret for the first shift.”
That meant Zhalert was likely the least accomplished gunner.
Kiedral looked eastward along the road ahead, if “road” happened to be the right word, since it had been cut, roughed out, and packed down by the dozers sent east to terraform some of the land and begin the layout of what would be a river port town. The trees and vegetation cut along the way had been rendered down into biomass to fuel the dozers.
The other senior officers had been aghast at Kiedral’s insistence on creating two highways, each more than six hundred kays long, one to reach another port city location and the other to reach a point in the middle of an endless forest. Although the northern road that the groundscout followed, the one to the middle of the forest, was less than a highway and more than a packed track, it was largely straight and level, and capable of bearing significant weight and resisting even torrential downpours. In time, Kiedral was determined, it would also be stone-paved.
Cultures with good roads survive.
II
Slightly after midday, when the indicators read that the groundscout had covered a hundred kays, Kiedral studied the terrain outside, still a mixture of hilly ground and scattered trees, almost like the hilly savanna of Afrique, although it would not be long before they entered the odd forest that covered most of the area west of the mid-continent mountains and south of the grassy hills that bordered on being desert. He turned to the driver. “Time to pull over and stretch, Fhostah.”
The golden-haired and pale driver nodded. “Yes, ser.”
Even as the groundcar eased onto the shoulder of the crude road, Kiedral found himself smiling. There was no need to leave the road. They were the only ones on it and would be for the entire trip. Old habits die hard.
Before he stepped from the groundscout, Kiedral lifted the portable comm unit from the holder between his seat and the driver’s and thumbed it on. “Main base, Star One, comm check.”
“Star One. Clear and strong.”
“Main base. Good signal this time. Out.”
Kiedral slipped the portable comm unit back into the holder, then opened the door and stepped out. His left hand brushed the holstered slug-thrower at his waist, which was turning out to be far more reliable than many of the standard Anglorian energy weapons. But then, half of them don’t work the way they’re supposed to … and none of the armorers can say why.
The air wasn’t nearly so damp as at the main base, but it wasn’t nearly as dry as the hilly grasslands led him to believe. He watched as the techs stepped out of the groundcar, all seven of them wary, their eyes rapidly surveying the terrain as they moved. The last to emerge was Zhalert, the tech4 who had manned the turret.
Six of the techs spread out, moving away from him and the groundscout. Kiedral and Squad Leader Thaeron waited as they swept the area, not that Kiedral thought they’d find anything inimical so close to the colony. Except you never know.
The red-haired combat tech—one of the comparatively few women in such a capacity in the Unity forces—was the last to return, slipping back from the area to the north of the groundcar with graceful movements. She turned to Thaeron. “All clear to the north, Squad Leader.”
“Nothing moving there, Tech Ryaelth?”
“No, Squad Leader.” The hint of a smile quirked her lips, suggesting something.
Her expression intrigued Kiedral, but she said nothing more as the other techs reported, and as Thaeron turned to the vice marshal. “Area appears clear, ser.”
“Thank you, Squad Leader.” Kiedral nodded, then walked some thirty meters up a small rise to get what he hoped would be a better view of the land to the north and east. Ryaelth and another tech—Gorran, since he was the other tech3—flanked him.
From the top of the grassy rise, Kiedral surveyed the terrain. The area within a kay or so of the road appeared to be mixed grasslands and trees, but farther to the north was forest, the tall and dark forest that the team had reported as “strange.” While he’d repeatedly asked for a better description of what they’d meant by that, the best any of the road-building and exploration teams had been able to say was that it felt like they were being watched. Yet they’d seen not the slightest sign of any local inhabitants, unlike in the lands to the east of the mid-continent mountains. Of course, that was why he’d picked the western lands for the colony. The last thing they needed was an immediate conflict with the locals, human as they appeared to be, most likely the descendants of another ship or ships gone astray. With his luck, they were probably Sybran, and that would just make matters worse.
In the distance, just at the edge of the strange forest, he thought he saw a large horned quadruped, almost like an elk, but in moments it was gone … if it had ever been there at all.
“Did either of you see that?”
“See what, ser?” asked Gorran.
“The elk?” asked Ryaelth. “It looked like an elk, but it just vanished.”
“Yes,” replied the vice marshal. “It did look like an elk.”
“Ser,” ventured the red-haired tech, “is this a terraformed world? Before us, I mean. If that was something like an elk…”
“It would appear so … or it’s the greatest instance of convergent evolution we’ve ever run across.” But neither would explain why there’s higher life on a moonless world. He shook his head. “We need to keep moving. Back to the groundscout.”
“Yes, ser.”
III
The following morning, the scout had barely reached a point fifteen kays farther east from where they had bivouacked that first night when Kiedral noted that there were trees sprouting less than five meters beyond the shoulder of the road. Those trees were far more than saplings, and he couldn’t believe that the construction team had left them so close to the road.
“Fhostah, pull over here.”
“Yes, ser.”
When Kiedral left the groundscout, he immediately walked to the nearest of the trees, then the next one. Both were large enough that they had to be five or six years old, if not ten. Somewhat farther away was an even larger tree.
As Kiedral made his way toward it, flanked by Baeltyn and Jaslak, he could see that the “new” trunk, a good twenty-five centimeters across, had grown out of the center of an older stump, one a good meter and a half across, that had been left when the road team had felled the large tree.
In less than three months … as much growth as in ten years?
Twwirrip! A yellow-and-black bird with yellow-banded wings offered an annoyingly cheerful series of chirps.
Yet there was something about those chirps … Kiedral’s hand went to the slug-thrower, and he had it up and aimed at the scaly flying creature that had launched itself directly at him from another tree to the north.
Both shots struck the small monstrosity, and it plummeted to the ground, writhing for a moment. Kiedral’s mouth opened as he watched reddish-white streams of something flare from two points in the creature’s chest, a good half meter across.
“What th
e frig is that, ser?” Jaslak’s voice held an edge.
“Looks like a flying dinosaur,” added Baeltyn.
Kiedral took in the four razor-sharp claws on each leg, and a beak that appeared sharper than any knife, as well as the heavy muscular body and triangular tail. It looks too heavy to fly.
“It’s burning up,” said Jaslak. “What did you hit it with, ser?”
“Regular slugs.” Kiedral looked closely at the creature, seeing that the strange reddish-white fire was indeed consuming the dead predator. Then his eyes went to the other trees for a moment.
The yellow-and-black bird was long since gone, as was the sense of danger.
In a few moments, all that was left of the scaly flying beast was a pile of warm gray ash.
“Weird…,” muttered Jaslak.
That’s an understatement.
Once he was back in the groundscout and they were on their way again, he entered a description of the flying monstrosity in the scout’s data bank.
The whole episode had seemed almost unreal, from trees regrowing impossibly quickly to the attack itself. He’d known, in a way he couldn’t explain, that he was about to be attacked. Had the annoyingly cheerful bird somehow warned him? How had he known it was a warning? If the bird hadn’t warned him, how had he known? Yet he’d reacted without knowing why or how, and that bothered him most of all.
He pursed his lips, his eyes on the road ahead, not really seeing it, as he continued to ponder what had happened.
What possessed you to decide to do this in person? What in the name of the Rational Stars gave you the thought that this was a good idea? He shook his head. Just to get a break from the “emperor”?
IV
Over the next two days of travel, Kiedral saw more and more trees that had regrown or regenerated impossibly quickly—but not a single ground animal of any sort, and only a few birds, and those at a distance. That bothered him almost more than the attack on the second day had.
The first solid indication he had that the terraforming team had faced more than a communications problem was a mass of blackened vegetation and charcoaled tree trunks that appeared on each side of the road less than two kays west from the last reported position of the exploration team. The last few kays of the road, Kiedral noted, had been far less cleanly graded and cleared.
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