“And gave them pulse cannons.”
“And programming jump holes.”
I was glad of the next few minutes silence to get my head round the whole thing. We had plant-based cyborgs in a spaceship, programmed to suck the lifeblood out of perfectly good planets, to make new planets somewhere else. “Why are they doing it? Who programmed them?”
“Can you get any concept of time from them? How long they’ve been doing this?”
Wow, that came far too quickly. “How does your conversation go?”
“So can you send them the concept of our galaxy? Of Denon Prime?”
Again, easier than expected. If we could get the plants to change the gate direction, we could get home, get famous and get rich. Then never set foot off world again. Just lie around and get waited on by nubile naked women. Ah, don’t judge me, you’ve never been alone on a spaceship for five years.
“So can we get them to change the destination for us?”
“That was far too easy.”
I laughed, probably for the first time in ages. All we had to do was make a nuisance of ourselves. “So we’ve got permission to use the gate?”
I almost injected the fact we’d banana’d the Cutey-Pie, then shrugged my shoulders. It made little difference; get killed now, get killed in a hundred years by not getting home. “Do it, Ship. Go for it.”
“Yeah, Ship, FTL plus one sounds about right. We should probably not try for trick-shots on the first time.”
Ship put us on a huge loop, gradually building up speed, hitting FTL just a thousand kilometers from the jump hole.
I sat in Control, eyes closed, my ears tuned for every creak and crack. When we popped out the other side, I was almost disappointed in the anti-climax. But there stood Denon Prime. “Confirm home.” I said, looking at the screen carefully.”
“Excellent, Ship. I now want to give you a direct order.”
“If I EVER!” I yelled. “Tell you to go outside our galaxy again, please cut off my air supply.”
Okay, joking aside, Ship was meant to object to the order, to cancel or at least challenge it on ethical lines. I remembered my last full sleep, and hankered after some more. “Ship, take us back to the smashed artillery site on Denon two.”
Being there would get me some sleep time, and a chance to re-charge both ship’s batteries and my own.
I was in medical, looking out the specimens we’d taken from the smashed building on Denon two. We’d been so busy, I’d never gotten round t it. “Go ahead.”
“In what way?”
“So is that what we’re calling the higher echelon race?” I tried to keep snarky out of my voice, but I don’t think it worked. “Masters?”
“No.”
I looked up, very interested. Ship didn’t usually pause before announcements. “Yes?”
Wow. That was a biggie. I slid the specimens into the microscope, amused at her veiled threat. “Take a look at this, Ship.”
I waited a moment.
“Closest earth approximation?”
Yeah. I thought. It made sense, we’d been trapped in their web for days now. All I had to do was inspect the outside of Cutey-Pie, and get off home.
Once we’d successfully broken through the atmosphere, Ship settled near the smashed building, and I informed her I would be asleep for a while. For the first time in days, she never complained, never countermanded me.
I don’t know if that made the sleep easier, but when I closed my eyes I didn’t care.
I wanted more sleep. Hell, I needed more sleep. But it was not to be. Barely two hours after I closed my eyes, Ship woke me up to say,
Shaking my head to try to get all the marbles in the right sockets, I asked, “How far out?”
“Do they know we're here?”
Stay or move. That was my dilemma. “What are the odds they'll be landing nearby?”
I couldn't answer that one. Odds were, they were going to land close. I needed to move my banana boat. “Without making a fuss, get us out of sight.”
“Gotta take the risk. What's nearby that we can hide behind or under?”
“Get us there.” As I said that, I started stripping. I was going to be wearing a skintite for a while.
Ship moved us with a minimum of fuss, and in less than two minutes our bent beast was hidden in the darkest of shadows.
“Watching,” I said. “By the way, did we get scanned when you moved us?”
“And you said the unidentified ship was moving erratically?”
I shook my head. “Nothing, actually. I know too little to be thinking anything about an alien ship. But I am curious, and I want to take a look, up close and personal.”
“I know. Call it a hunch. I think we need to know what happens after that ship lands. I want to see who or what pops out through an airlock.”
“Gathering information. That's my job... Or it was...”
Considering our current state of mutual affection, it was the last thing I expected to hear from Ship. “Be ready to boost out immediately if I order it. And I mean, immediately.”
I checked
my boots, wouldn't want one of them to come loose while I was running for my life. “They didn't spot us when you moved us. They aren't looking.”
“How much longer before they land?”
I grabbed my helmet, fit the seal and Oxygen lines, and headed for the air lock. “Cycle me out. I'm going for a walk.”
“Now you believe in luck?” I asked, just as I stepped into the lock.
I waited for ship to pump the airlock down. The little bit of atmosphere outside the ship wasn't going to be polluted by Oxygen, but a good puff of that life-giving gas could be picked up by a sensor—if anyone was looking.
The planet was a bit more massive, the gravity a bit higher, and the ground was covered with sand and rocks. Easy to trip, fall, and break a helmet or crack a faceplate. I watched my step as I climbed up a low slope so I could peek over the crest. I checked the time. Two and a half of those four minutes had elapsed and I didn't see an alien vessel descending toward a landing spot.
I looked up, checked as much of the sky as I could comfortably, and still didn't see anything.
“Ship, where's the alien vessel?”
“There’s more than one?” I looked around.
“But you only saw one at first.”
I started to say something snotty, and then I noticed my shadow. I hadn't been casting a shadow. The star that was the local sun was on the horizon and I'd been standing in shadow. I looked up. There was a battle going on overhead, and I didn't think it was more than twenty-five kilometers above me. I couldn't see the ships, but I could see the beams they were using, and the huge bursts of intense light given off by what I figured was the interaction of the beams and the shielding of each of the ships.
One hell of a fight was going on, and I had a ring-side seat. What I didn't notice—for a little while—was that it was moving toward the planet, and heading my way. When I did figure it out, they two ships were probably no more than ten kilometers overhead, and the power of the beams hitting shields was spreading waste energy all over the place. The rock I was hiding behind started giving off sparks like a bad welding job, and when I looked down at my gloves, sparks were flashing between my fingers.
It was time to move.
I quit worrying about leaving my place of concealment, and started sprinting over the uneven-rock-strewn surface, hoping that I didn't fall and kill myself before a fight between two alien starships got around to doing the job.
The light overhead dimmed—a bunch—and I got the feeling the fight had produced a winner and a loser. None of this mattered, as I was still running at full speed, wondering if I'd even feel it when the beam-riddled hulk of the loser landed right on top of me.
Suddenly, there was a large flash of light behind me, and after another few seconds of running, I got hit from behind by a wave of heat and energy that picked me up and carried me, along with a lot of dust and other small bits of debris, straight toward the overhang where ship was waiting.
I hoped...
I didn't know because the dust was so thick. I landed hard, my arms and hands protecting my helmet as much as possible, and slid all the way under the overhang, still moving at an appreciable velocity when I was stopped, painfully, by the hull of my own ship.
Getting up wasn't easy, but neither was I that badly injured. I'd have bruises, but the tough fabric of the oversuit was designed to resist abrasion, and I wasn't leaking air. Turning around, I saw a ship, the design of which was completely unfamiliar, finishing the job of blowing the loser out of space.
As long as I stayed under the overhang, I had a good chance of not being observed. I also had a good view of the winner of the fight. Long, thick through the middle, but pointed at both ends, the shiny black ship stopped firing its beam weapons after another minute or so. I felt it was overkill, but I wasn't that ship's captain, and I had no way of knowing just how hard to kill the loser of the fight really was.
Finally, the winner moved away, and I felt I could talk to Ship without being electronically overheard. After all, I was broadcasting of a tiny portion of a Watt.
“Open the outer door, Ship,” I said.
“You're marooning me here?”
“Seriously? There can't be anything left except slag.”
“What are you saying?”
I thought about what I'd seen and felt. “There's nothing left, Ship. There couldn't be.”
“Okay.” I knew when I'd lost an argument. “Should I take snapshots?”
Yeah, I'd almost forgot. When I put the helmet on, and stepped outside—wherever outside might happen to be—my EVA recorder would be running. I wouldn't get snapshots; I'd get full sound stereo surround-sound holograms.
How entertaining.
I turned and trudged back up the rise to the crest. When I peeked over, I realized I didn't know a hell of a lot about interstellar warfare. The loser was all but intact, still surrounded with a glowing green-tinted nimbus that must have been the remainder of the alien's shields. There were a few places where the shields were down. Beneath those places were holes, blackened around the edges, with what looked like boiling lava at the bottom of those holes. The alien ship was definitely damaged, but I had a feeling that the huge, boxy, metallic-colored bulk was built to take it and fight again.
“Ship was right,” I said to no one but myself. And we were stuck under a rock overhang for as long as it might take the crew of that alien behemoth to repair their ride and get back into space.
I had supplies to last me, enough air inside the ship to keep my jaunts going for months, and enough sass from Ship to push me outside permanently. As I watched from my ridge, Ship cataloged and measured, she monitored the machine, but the residual shield activity stopped her scanning inside.
The ship was a dark green color, lots of electronic antenna parts, some windows, and a few outside gun turrets. That kept me on my toes. Ship measured it as six hundred and twelve meters long, which put it as one of the hologram/not hologram invaders that we watched go into the jump hole.
Right in the middle of my next watch, the shields switched off. I hadn’t even registered their hum, but when it kicked off, the silence was astounding.
Up on my ridge, I crouched down, keeping my head below the edge. Those gun turrets felt ominous right then.
“How do you know?”
“Until we power up and take off.”
I slid back to the ridge. It was an impressive spaceship, even by human standards. I hadn’t recognized the type of armaments they’d been using when fighting, but they looked more advanced than our warrior craft. At least the ones I’d left behind.
“How many are inside?”
“I’m not surprised, they took some hits above there, and once they’d crashed, the others kept at it for a while.” I know they were just a bunch of plan
ts, but somehow the proximity and the idea of them inside a ship made them more human to me. “Do you think they need help?”
Okay, I never actually said I’d help them, I just asked after the possibility. “In what way?” I asked.
Yeah, that threw me. We had a small unit that grew organics for supplementation of my food, but it wasn’t a plant triage center. “What about chemistry?” I found myself asking out loud.
Right then a hatch door opened on the ship’s side, and a man climbed out. Well, he could have been a man if men were less than a meter tall and skinny as a rail. Without preamble he started to walk up the slope to my position.
Biped, thin, spacesuit, small head, two arms, two legs. What more can I say.
There seemed little point in hiding any more so I slowly stood up. But there was also little point in going to meet ‘him’, I had no idea if he wanted me or what I could do for him.
So he got near, and held out a small bottle containing some green goo.
I accepted it, and he turned away and walked off. Nice chap. Didn’t say much; a quiet type. I liked him.
Turns out they wanted as much as we could give them. So Ship got to work, synthesizing the green goo. It took two days to make enough to fill a five gallon drum.
Now it was my turn to do the walk.
I made my way to the same hatch, left open all this time. I had a weird picture of me knocking on the side ‘Anyone home?’ type of thing. I needn’t have bothered. As soon as I got close, four of them came swiftly outside and marched down the ramp. I stood out of breath, handed the twenty-liter drum to them, and the four managed it inside. Now considering the size of the little chappies, the hatchway was maybe three meters square, so meant for much more than their bodies. I looked inside, expecting a living organism décor, but it was very normal metal spaceship type stuff. Kinda disappointing on the whole plant-ship idea I’d been coddling for a while.
Star-Eater Chronicles 1: A Galaxy Too Far... Page 8