“It’s called concrete,” he finally said. “The hard floor seems to suit the frames of the aliens that inhabit this planet although its production is harmful to their environment.”
The coldness of it ran through the soles of Marlaac’s feet into his body, and he shivered as he looked up at his dad again. To look him in the eye required him tilting his head up so far it ran a pain across the base of his skull. Taking a step back helped. “Why would they do anything to harm their environment?”
His father raised his double-jointed arms in a wide and slow shrug. “Ours is not to reason why, son.”
That was a new phrase. It must have been one from this planet. It was often the way when his dad was colonizing. Just before or just after a trip, he would say a lot of new phrases and words. Some would stick, but most would be gone within a few weeks as he turned his attention to the next planet.
Marlaac’s expression was clearly blank enough for his dad to explain further. “To try to understand the motivations of a race nothing like our own is a futile and baffling pursuit. You need to learn this for when you start coming with me. It’s the first thing you need to learn in fact. I’ve seen tough warriors from our home planet drive themselves to madness trying to empathize with aliens. It doesn’t work. Phase one requires detached objectivity more than any of the other phases.”
After looking over both shoulders, Lord Scartoo, who was clearly checking they were alone, leaned over and put one arm around his son, his harsh voice softening. “But let’s worry about that as we walk. How are you? How’s school?”
Marlaac nodded. School was rubbish, and he missed having his dad around, but he nodded all the same.
Replying with his own stoic nod, Lord Scartoo stood up straight again and checked around once more. “Good.” He was back in character.
“I can’t believe how much you’ve grown, Dad.”
Lord Scartoo looked down at himself and shrugged. “We’re onto a good thing here. Our research told us it would be a planet where we could thrive.”
“You must be what, ten feet tall now?”
“Nearly. Nine feet seven inches the last time I checked. I’m so pleased we found Earth. Our army’s flourishing here. We should be ready to move on in record time.”
When Marlaac wrinkled his nose, his father stared at him. “What is it?”
With the burn of vomit leaving from his sinuses, the world’s aroma had elbowed its way in. “The smell,” he said. “It reminds me of dirt.”
“You get used to it. I barely notice it now. Anyway, let’s not worry about that. Are you ready to go? You need to see phase one in action. It won’t be long before you’re apprenticing with me. You need to see how it’s done.”
The rough concrete bit into Marlaac’s soft feet with every step. The sting of burgeoning blisters spread across the soles of them. He winced as he raised a hand in his father’s direction. “Wait up, Dad, I can’t move as fast as you.”
Lord Scartoo slowed his pace, looking down at Marlaac as he pulled level. “Once phase one has had some time to settle in, we’ll make more changes. We can’t do too much too quickly; it’s not good for a planet’s ecosystem to turn up and change everything all at once. But when we do,” he stamped one of his large feet against the floor, “we’ll get rid of this horrible stuff. It’s everywhere!”
Even standing on it was uncomfortable. “It feels like walking through the needle forests of Dengba.”
A smile settled on Lord Scartoo’s face, and his black eyes lost focus. “That it does. It’s only been a few months, but if feels like so long ago since I breathed the fresh air of Andredia.”
Was it just the air he missed? “Do you miss Mum?”
“What kind of a question’s that? Of course I do. How is she? And the twins?”
It was easy to feel like he forgot about them while he was away. Marlaac never stopped thinking about his dad when he wasn’t there. “They’re good. They send their love.”
The pair walked the rest of the way in silence.
When they reached the end of the corridor, Marlaac stood aside while his dad grabbed the handle of the white door. “Now, before I open this, you need to remember that phase one is rarely pretty. It’s the most effective way for us to take control of a planet. You’re becoming a man now, so you need to see how this is done, but it may take some getting used to, okay?”
Marlaac’s throat dried, and he gulped as he stared at his father before returning a weak nod.
When his dad opened the door, an invisible yet fetid cloud of heat rushed forward. It reeked of stale sweat and excrement. It was so potent, it left a taste on the back of Marlaac’s tongue like he’d eaten a road-killed whomp rat. With his guts tensing, he heaved again. At least he had nothing left to vomit.
Marlaac clamped his hand across his nose and gripped hard to try and keep the smell out. The action muffled his words. “What’s that stink?”
Several sniffs of the air as if he were trying to locate the smell, and Lord Scartoo said, “It’s their waste. It’s another one of those things you get used to after a bit of time here.”
This wasn’t a smell Marlaac would be getting used to in a hurry.
The room they entered was clearly large. The sound of opening and closing the door raced off into the dark, but it was too dark for Marlaac to see anything. After several blinks and rubbing his eyes with his free hand, the shadows in the room started to take form. Because this planet was much farther from its sun than Andredia, everything seemed gloomy and cold in comparison. “Does the lack of light not bother you, Dad?”
“At first, it did. I’ve been to much worse places though. We’ve colonized planets like Cragarty and Voldarg where they only see the slightest glimmer of a sun once every thousand years. This is paradise compared to them.”
The response drove an anxious buzz through all six of Marlaac’s guts. Was he really up for following his dad into colonization? How could he possibly live up to his reputation? How could he spend so much time away from his beloved planet? How could he make the decisions that he knew his dad had to make? He’d seen what the job did to his dad. For days after returning from colonization, weeks even, his dad’s study door would be closed, and they wouldn’t hear a sound from him. Marlaac once walked in on him crying, and his dad went crazy. He’d never tried to go in again.
But it wasn’t like he could tell his dad no. This was his destiny whether he liked it or not. He shook the thought from his head, his vision finally clearing to the point where he could see the room better.
A walkway ran down the middle, but on either side were small cages. They were pressed so close together there was no gap between them. Every one of them contained a creature of pink and soft-looking skin. Each creature had eyes of different colors. Every Andredian had black eyes. The kaleidoscope of irises stared at the two Andredian’s as they walked past. Some made noises Marlaac couldn’t understand, but most were mute. “What are they, Dad?”
“They’re called humans. They’re the dominant species here.” There was a hint of regret in his tone when he said, “Well, they used to be.” It was only a hint however. Lord Scartoo didn’t do sympathy.
Crash! One of the humans rushed forward in their cage and head butted the bars. The noises that came from its mouth were strange and high-pitched. It was a sound so peculiar that Marlaac wouldn’t have been able to imitate it even if he tried. His tongue was too thick and his mouth too tight. “What are they saying?”
“I don’t know, son. No one’s been able to understand their dialect yet.”
The faces on the strange creatures hung limp, and their eyes watered. What were they trying to tell them?
“At this factory, we mostly have females. There are many processes being carried out all over the planet as phase one. The males have been shipped off somewhere else.”
Lord Scartoo stopped by one of the cages. The female human inside was hunched over on all fours. There was very little space for her to move. “This th
ing,” he said as he poked a particularly fleshy part of the creature’s body with his long index finger, “produces the sustenance for their young.”
The creature’s eyes widened, and it hissed. The beast withdrew, the loud crash! making Marlaac jump when she connected with the back of the cage.
Crash!
Her head smashed into the cage as she tried to look over one shoulder.
Crash!
The same thing happened as she tried to look over the other one.
How long had she been in there? How long would she have to stay in there?
As if she didn’t know what else to do, the human continued moving backwards and forwards. Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash! It was impossible to understand the noises that came out of her mouth, but it was clear she was distressed.
Lord Scartoo grabbed Marlaac’s shoulder and pulled him back. “Let her calm down.”
When they were a few paces farther away, the human’s behavior leveled out, and her thrashing changed to a more contained but violent shake. Deep purple and puffy skin sat beneath her green eyes, which were now watering. She stared straight at Marlaac. What was she trying to say to him? And what could he do about it anyway? “So they feed their young from their own body?” Marlaac asked.
Stroking his chin as he stared at the human, Lord Scartoo said, “Yeah, it’s strange, isn’t it?”
When his dad walked off, Marlaac followed behind, breathing a sigh of relief because they were moving away from the human and the horrible noises that came from her mouth.
Every step up the long room deepened the pit of dread in Marlaac’s stomachs. The humans got fatter the closer they were to the exit. Some were so large their pale and waxy flesh pushed through the bars of the cages, and their bodies were emblazoned with dark red and purple lines. They looked like they could burst at any moment.
By the time they reached the end of the room, most of them were too big to even move. What were they doing to these strange creatures? How long did they live in the cages for?
“We don’t know much about humans yet,” Lord Scartoo said, “but from what we can see, their planet is set up for efficiency. It seems that their main motivator for every action is to make processes as efficient as possible. Mass production with the highest productivity.”
The concrete floor was stinging so badly, Marlaac could feel blisters forming beneath the blisters on the soles of his feet. Instead of responding to his father, he continued to look at the miserable creatures, and they continued to stare back.
While some of the humans at the other end of the room had made strange noises, those up this end were all silent. They sat in their own filth, and their hair was clogged with dirt and grease. One of them at the very end had fallen forward in her cage, and her face was pressed into the bars as she dozed.
It was only when four Andredians approached her and banged on the cage that she woke up. Like the other women, her eyes shot wide. She knew what was coming.
Before she could do anything, the back of her cage was flung open, and she was dragged out by her ankles.
With a deep and echoing bray, she put up a feeble fight before being forced to stand. Upright, she looked even more swollen than when she was in the cage. Her stomach was distended, and she looked like she could fall over at any moment.
Her gait was peculiar as she was led from the room through some double doors at the end. She moved with her legs spread wide and a hand resting on her lower back. She kept stopping to breathe as if the little exercise was too much for her swollen body. How was this the dominant species on the planet? They looked so fragile.
Marlaac jumped again when a firm grip took a hold of his left bicep. He looked up at his dad.
“We’re going to go in there, but we need to hold back and let them go first. The more Andredians there are around them—especially one of my stature—the more distressed these creatures get. It slows the process down.”
What process? What were they doing to them? Could they not see the human was in pain? Marlaac didn’t ask any of these questions. Instead, he watched the closed door, his dad’s grip still around his bicep, and he waited to be told what he needed to do next. That was how it worked when you were Lord Scartoo’s son.
After a few minutes, Marlaac felt his dad tap him on the shoulder. When he looked up, Lord Scartoo opened the door and led him through to the next room.
There was a humid fug in the air that made it harder to breathe. But that was nothing compared to the noise…
On the floor to their right was the female human who’d been taken from the cage. She screamed as she twisted and writhed. Six Andredians surrounded her and two of them were holding her legs open. While she yelled, she looked from one Andredian to the next, her breaths short, her head movements jerky. How would Marlaac and his dad have made it any worse for her? This creature had clearly reached her limit.
Marlaac pulled his hand away from his nose. The smell was still bad but not as potent as in the other room. Maybe he was desensitizing to it already. Whatever it was, Marlaac clamped both of his hands over his ears to shut out the human’s sounds.
Impassivity sat on his dad’s face as he watched on. How could Marlaac ever do this job?
They’d stood there for so long that a shake ran through Marlaac’s legs as he continued to watch the process. It had lasted for hours. Every time he turned to his dad to ask him what was happening, his dad answered by nodding at the human.
The truth was finally revealed when one of the Andredians pulled a baby from between the female’s legs. Marlaac’s breath caught in his throat. “She was pregnant?”
Lord Scartoo nodded. “Yes. They all are. Wasn’t that obvious?”
It was now.
When the human reached out to her baby, her hands were knocked away by one of the Andredians with a loud slap! Another walked off with the infant.
More screeches and cries came from the human, and she lashed out and kicked in the direction of the Andredians. This wasn’t right. She was clearly distressed. Why had they taken her baby away? Within seconds, she was overpowered and dragged away, her child disappearing in the opposite direction, her screams calling after it.
“If only we could understand what she was saying,” Marlaac said.
Although his dad didn’t speak, the way he looked down at Marlaac said it all. They didn’t need to know how they felt. To understand them would be to feel guilt, and colonization wasn’t about feeling guilty. Marlaac had heard that line a thousand times before. Usually soon after a trip away. Usually when his dad was at his most tired and stressed from months of taking over a planet.
Like in the other section, this room had cages all the way down either side. Each one was so small, the humans could only kneel and look forward. If anything, the cages were slightly smaller than in the last room. The women were without child now after all.
It was only when the new mother got close to an empty cage that the fight finally left her weak and sweating body. She was folded into one of the small prisons and strapped into restraints. In an instant, she went from a birthing mother to just one of many naked females in a long line of cages.
Looking at his dad again, Marlaac couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. “Is this right? Should we be doing this to them?”
Without taking his eyes from the human, Scartoo shrugged. “In all honesty, I don’t know. They certainly seem distressed, but to try and understand the feelings of a race alien to our own is the pursuit of a fool. I’ve told you this already. Phase one is about sending as few ripples through a planet’s infrastructure as possible. We don’t have time for sentimentality.”
When his father walked away again, Marlaac stared at his wide, green back for a few seconds. If Marlaac was to do this job, he would have to learn to stop being so soft.
As they walked down the room, Marlaac looked at the females on either side of them. They were all hooked up to metal tubes and instruments. The gentle, pulsing throb of active machinery rang out through the w
arehouse. Many of them had watering eyes. Many of them had drawn features, their mouths hanging down as if they didn’t have the energy to close them.
Having walked the line of cages, Marlaac—as he had done in the previous room—watched the appearance of the females deteriorate. In the final cage was a human rocking back and forth. A continuous droning sound came from her mouth as she crashed into the bars both behind and in front of her. She seemed oblivious to Marlaac watching her.
“Marlaac!”
Lord Scartoo was waiting at the doors to the next room. One more glance at the broken human and Marlaac ran after his father.
When they stepped into the next room, it was so dark that Marlaac buried his fists into his eyes as if it would clear them. The action did nothing other than sting slightly, but after a few seconds, his vision adjusted again to the poor light.
The cages in this room were tiny in comparison to the others. Each one was no longer than Marlaac’s forearm. Instead of metal bars, they had solid but transparent sides. They were small, clear boxes. They too ran the length of the room on either side.
The Andredians who had taken the newborn baby were currently sliding it into one of the tiny prisons.
Lord Scartoo pointed at the cages. “The cells are small to maximize space. The tighter you can pack the humans in, the more you can accommodate. Efficiency, see.”
The air was alive with the shrill cries of the little ones. There was something about them that made Marlaac’s pulse race. Like he should be doing something to help. Some sounded cross, as if they expected their cries to be heard and acted upon. Others seemed like they were just making a noise because they didn’t know what else to do. Deaf ears ran this place, and it seemed like some of the babies already understood that.
Marlaac’s father took his hand and led him over to one of the small boxes.
At first, Marlaac turned away, but when his dad tapped the top of the box, Marlaac looked at the baby inside.
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