Greenflies

by Darling, Andrew Leete

  “There’s no laser damage,” said Butler. “Most likely that one engaged more conventional forces. Perhaps one of the interception bases in another country.”

  “Or maybe a city,” said Meg, pessimistic.

  Butler wanted to reassure her, but, truth be told, with the shoddy state of communication during the Greenfly attack, it was entirely possible that there had been attacks of major urban areas that they had just not heard about. In the end, it was Marshal who vetoed that theory.

  “Those holes were left by sustained assault rifle fire, by well-trained forces, not city police,” said Marshal. “I’d guess Chinese from the mix of calibers. Probably their own interception force…”

  He was interrupted by motion on the bullet-riddled transport. It had found its parking space, and the hatches on its side were opening. A burst of steam emerged from the doorway as the atmosphere from inside the transport vented. Four Greenflies emerged, one of which was carrying a Chinese soldier, apparently badly wounded by plasma fire. The soldier had apparently still been alive when the door opened, and now he convulsed madly in the sudden vacuum. The Greenfly gripping him adapted quickly as the soldier began to flail, and heedlessly followed two of its cohorts into one of the hexagonal tunnels. The last of the four Greenflies stayed with its transport.

  “Oh my God…” said Meg.

  “Can we help him?” asked Franz.

  “No more than we could help Hegerty,” said Captain Ramachandran, as she watched the Chinese man’s blood boil in the vacuum. “He won’t suffer long in total vacuum.”

  That appeared to be disputed by the fact that the human was still kicking as the Greenflies dragged him out of view.

  “They weren’t armed,” said Marshal before turning to Greenbeard. “It’s standard procedure to leave weapons in the vehicles?”

  “There are no weapons permitted aboard the Whaleship,” replied Greenbeard.

  “You mean, we have them outgunned, on their own ship?” asked Meg.

  “There are no weapons permitted aboard the Whaleship,” repeated Greenbeard.

  Butler nodded, “It’s probably an inter-species security consideration. The Whaleship needs to maintain its dominance somehow. But given the number of Greenflies here, even without weapons or armor, we’ll be overwhelmed if we try anything blunt.”

  Marshal pondered a moment as their own transport came to rest in its parking space, hanging over the transparent hull. The lack of gravity would be a major liability anywhere on this vessel.

  “Where is the entrance to the unauthorized section, Greenfly?” asked Marshal.

  “200 meters along that corridor,” Greenbeard said, pointing. He was actually pointing to a section of the interior of the transport that was opaque to Marshal, but its writhing pylae were conveying optical information to Greenbeard. Marshal understood well enough not to make a fuss about it.

  “Is it large enough to pilot the transport through?”

  “Yes,” said Greenbeard, after some hesitation.

  He turned to the others, “We’ll fly the transport down the corridor to the entrance to the unauthorized section. At that point we’ll separate. Team two will remain with the transport to find an alternative target of interest.”

  “Do it,” he said to Greenbeard.

  The transport shimmied out of its parking space and made for one of the passageways, which from a human perspective resembled nothing so much as a hole in the ground in this 3D environment with flexible meanings for words like up and down. Some of the other Greenflies in the chamber appeared curious at the rogue transport, but they made no effort to interfere. Like humans would under similar circumstances, the Greenfly teamsters assumed whatever was happening was happening for good reason.

  The transport stalled for a moment before the lip of the corridor entrance, hesitant to commit to a ninety degree turn. At Greenbeard’s prodding, it moved forward, tilted, and began accelerating down the narrow passageway. The transport nearly filled the hexagonal tube, and as it moved along, Greenflies were crushed against the surfaces above and below it. There was some space to the left and right where Greenflies could slide by if they were prepared. For the Greenflies who tried to take cover on the left, Leena had a laser rifle ready to greet them.

  The travel through the Whaleship corridor turned into a very bloody two hundred meters. The alien transport had armor that rivaled terrestrial tanks, and the unarmored Greenflies had no defense against it as it hurtled forward. There were branches in the corridor, and some Greenflies took refuge in those, but the racing transport was far faster than they. Sliding doorways of white wood which must have been triggered by motion sprang open as the transport passed, but they were spaced too far apart for the Greenflies to find sanctuary there. When they reached their destination, a long trail of bubbling purple liquid lay behind the transport.

  The right side door of the transport yawned open, and before the humans was another of the doors, like all the rest in this hallway save that it was not sliding open. Not one to be put off by such an obstacle, Colonel Marshal drew his laser rifle and sliced the door out of its housing. What was visible beyond the door was a closet, a hexagonal chamber no bigger than six feet on a side.

  “A dead end,” said Marshal. There was no menace in his voice, per se, but Greenbeard’s seconds were probably numbered.

  The back of the transport shuddered, and a wave of heat washed around it in the hall. Someone was firing a plasma weapon into its rear. A second blast struck, and the entire transport seemed to shudder, as if in pain.

  “That rule didn’t last very long!” yelled Meg.

  “I think the closet is a teleporter!” yelled Franz. “Just go!”

  Colonel Marshal grabbed his two charges, pushed off the transport with his legs, and floated into the closet. They saw the alien transport slowly accelerate, plasma striking it in the back, moments before they vanished.

  Butler, Meg and Colonel Marshal flashed into existence in a chamber that resembled nothing so much as a cave interior. They fell to the ground, suddenly under the influence of gravity, only Marshal able to keep his feet.

  The room they had appeared in was ovoid, with stalactite-like lamps hanging from the ceiling. They cast a dim red glow across the chamber, rendering the real color of the walls and floor impossible to determine. There was enough room to walk around beneath the stalagmite lamps, but only just, and there wasn’t much space to walk around to. The longest axis of the room was only twenty feet, running from the teleportation pad they were at to an oval surface, presumably a doorway, on the other side. It clearly wasn’t built for a human, only being three feet in height and twice that wide. Other than the stalactite lamps and the obvious means of egress, the only furnishings were a half-dozen pillows about the size of bean bag chairs.

  Colonel Marshal wasted no time in pulling his charges to one side of the chamber and training his laser rifle upon the teleportation pad. There was no sign of either pursuit or the other team members traveling through the pad.

  “I don’t think we’ll be followed,” said Butler, “At least not by the Greenflies, or not immediately. This room is pressurizing, and I’d wager with oxygen. It’s an airlock, of sorts.”

  He held up his arm, and the puffiness typical of pressure suits was visibly fading. Soon the fabric hung off his arm, indicating pressure had been equalized. The same could be observed in Meg’s suit and, to some degree, on Marshal’s armor. The pressure increased above one atmosphere, as determined by a feeling of force on the humans’ skin.

  “It’s like being underwater,” said Meg, trying to pop her ears, but the suit making it impossible to squeeze her nose.

  Butler popped the seal of his suit around the neck, and there was a soft popping noise as the pressure on the face plate of the suit equalized. While any qualified exploration team would have taken issue with his exposing himself to the strange atmosphere, Meg and Colonel Marshal failed to react. Meg had grown up watching science fiction movies where that was e
xactly how the actors tested air quality, and for Colonel Marshal, determining the human habitability of this air was important strategic data, worth losing one life over. Had he been asked beforehand, though, he would have suggested it be Meg who remove her helmet.

  “The air seems breathable,” said Butler, taking a few trial breaths, “Though if there’s too much CO2 here, I guess we won’t know until I fall over. There is a smell… sharp, metallic, something like rush hour traffic in Los Angeles.”

  “Ozone,”suggested Marshal.

  “That’s it,” said Butler, grinning, “We definitely won’t be pursued here, in that case. With the high pressure, probably a high oxygen content, and the ozone, this airlock is meant to keep Greenflies out. Any Greenfly in this environment would oxidize quickly, perhaps even wearing the armor bugs.”

  Meg popped her own seal and removed her helmet. She rubbed her ears and exercised her jaw to equalize internal pressure, “Why would there be rooms on the Greenfly ship where they’re not able to go?”

  “Because it’s not a Greenfly ship,” said Butler, moving over to one of the pillows to examine it, “It transports Greenflies now, but the Whaleship had other functions once. Passengers, missions, perhaps wars. Even now, it is not owned by the Greenflies, but rather the Greenflies work for it. Having regions where the Greenflies cannot go must give it a modicum of safety against mutiny. Or perhaps this area was designed for the original species which designed both the Whaleships and the Greenflies. If the Architects were worried about their own creations turning on them, it might make sense to make the Greenflies allergic to their home atmosphere. Whatever case, this chamber was designed for paranoia.”

  “Are we trapped, doctor?” asked Marshal. “Will we have to return to the cargo bay?”

  Butler was still poking one of the pillows, which appeared to be for exactly what it looked like. It was a chair.

  “Doctor!”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Butler, “Please forgive me. I’m a little overwhelmed, and now that the firefight is over… um, yes, I’d say if this chamber was to keep out Greenflies, then the door will open eventually, once enough time has passed to ensure any Greenfly intruders have been killed or driven away. The door may lead to a passenger compartment or bridge of some sort.”

  As if on cue, the oval door irised open.

  Marshal held up a hand to the others and approached the doorway warily, laser rifle at ready. He rolled through, and then there was silence for perhaps twenty seconds.

  “Doctor, I need you here.”

  Butler went to hands and knees and awkwardly crawled through the small aperture. When he got to the other side, he reached up to get a helping hand from Colonel Marshal, but the soldier had both hands firmly gripped on his laser rifle. The laser rifle was aimed at a small creature, standing no more than ten feet away from the humans.

  It matched the images Greenbeard remembered of the Architects nearly exactly. It had the same three segmented design as the Greenflies, but it appeared to ambulate on all six limbs most of the time like a scorpion. The hands were far more articulate than those of the Greenflies, or rather the foremost pairs of hands were. The rear limbs had the same three-toed design of the asteroid miners. Its carapace was brown with no trace of the pylae the Greenflies used to communicate. The ugliest part of the creature was the head, which seemed to be all mouth, surrounded by a circle of small black eyes. It was much smaller than the Greenflies, no more than three feet from head to tail or side to side when it was splayed on all six limbs.

  The room where it was waiting was less peculiar then the creature but far more awe-inspiring. This cylindrical chamber was evidently situated somewhere on the surface of the Whaleship, for it had windows running along the wall hosting breath-taking views. One of the Trojans was visible with clarity enough to make out tiny shapes moving on its rocky surface. Through the windows on the opposite side of the chamber could be seen the face of Jupiter, about as large here as the moon from Earth’s surface. The room was not just windows, however. About forty yards across, the room was interspersed with several dozen vertical columns similar to the stalactites from the airlock, save that they ran all the way from floor to ceiling. At the base of each column was a hole, about the same size and shape as the door from the airlock. There were more pillows scattered around, but there were also a number of other objects with textures similar to plastic and metal. Tools, or what tools might look like after thousands of years of neglect.

  The creature spoke.

  “Russian,” said Butler and Marshal in unison.

  “Why would an alien creature from like a zillion years ago speak Russian?”asked Meg.

  “That is a very good question, young lady. Unfortunately, my Russian is a little spare,” replied Butler.

  Marshal began uttering a stream of incomprehensible syllables, which the creature answered with a series of its own. Clearly not liking the answer, Marshal began another stream of rapid Russian. The new answer made him grimace.

  “It’s not an Architect, it’s a servant, artificial like the Greenflies,” said Marshal.

  “So, I wasn’t imagining things,” said Butler, looking down at the strange but attentive creature, “The first thing it said… it asked us if we’d like anything to eat or drink and…”

  “It offered to take our pressure suits,” finished Marshal, “It’s a maid. And it was built specifically to serve someone else in here.”

  “Someone who speaks Russian,”said Butler, “a human in the command center of the whaleship itself. I guess now we know why the Greenfly tactics became so conventional all of a sudden. Someone taught them how to fight humans.”

  “Da.”

  The voice came from one of the holes in the floor on the other side of the room. There was a single gun report, and Butler lurched to one side. When he turned back to the others, a small trickle of blood was visible on the left side of his chest. His mouth open soundlessly, his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed to the floor. The exit wound from the rifle round was the size of a fist.

  Marshal seized Meg and pulled her behind one of the columns with sufficient speed to knock the wind out of her. He clapped an armored hand over her mouth as she tried to scream. There were no further shots from the sniper, but he heard a shuffling noise across the large room, perhaps the sniper changing position. The alien maid, oblivious to any danger or possessing no survival instinct, moved over to the spreading pool of blood, examined it briefly, and left in search of something akin to a mop.

  Marshal indicated that Meg should remain exactly where she was, and he moved from behind the column with rifle at ready. He darted from column to column, occasionally rolling, and occasionally moving to a column not along the line of approach. It was much like the training games with the ghost-like opponents he’d been fighting for years. While the sniper made took no further shots, Marshal had a clear map in his mind of where exactly the Russian had fired from.

  However, the construction of the room appeared to complicate his approach. The hole at the base of each column was not just a pit but a passageway to someplace deeper into the Whaleship’s habitable area. He could see little handholds winding down the oval shafts, a little small for himself but ideal for a creature of the maid’s construction. No doubt Butler, had he been alive, would have gleaned endless insights into the social structure of the Architects from these anthill-like passageways. From a more tactical perspective, Marshal thought that if the passageways connected someplace below this main antechamber, Marshal and Meg were in very real danger of being flanked.

  A shriek from near the airlock confirmed his fear. Marshal raced back to his starting position, but when he arrived at the column where he had left his charge, he found only a few drops of her blood. They were clustered around the edge of the hole, but deeper down there appeared to be a smear along the wall, as if she were dragged or allowed to slide down the passageway. The vertical passageways were quite steep; it was unlikely a falling human could stop them
selves easily. A teenage girl not notable for her strength had no chance whatsoever. He began to consider his options, operating under the premise that he was the last one of his team left alive aboard the ship.

  He wasn’t given long to ponder, as a figure popped up from a hole fifteen feet away. The speed at which he leaped upwards bespoke incredible strength, especially as there was probably no floor to jump from down there. He’d thrust himself upwards using the small handholds alone.

  To any other human, the attack would have come as a complete surprise, too fast for perception, but to Marshal, it might as well have been in slow motion. He analyzed the build of the man, even as he was leaping upwards. He was a bear of a man, probably eight feet in height and of such girth that travel through the passageways had to be a tight fit. His face was a mass of gray beard and heavily lined skin. His body was cloaked in ragged clothing, stitched together in an odd way, probably meant to hide lumpy deformities beneath. One of his hands was hidden beneath an outsized sleeve, but his other gripped a hunting rifle. He fired the rifle one handed as he leaped, as comfortably as if it were a pistol.

  The Colonel evaded a shot by dodging behind a column. He continued the motion, came into view on the other side of the column and fired three shots of his own. The laser light lanced through the Russian’s left hand, hip, and heart. Instead of the small red steam explosions Marshal had come to expect from shooting human targets with the laser, the wounds instead erupted in bursts of orange foam. Screaming in pain, the Russian disappeared back down the passageway he had come from. The hunting rifle lay in two pieces on the floor, the wood burning and the edge of the severed barrel molten.

  A half minute later, Marshal spotted the Russian peering over the edge of one of the holes. He dove back down when the laser was pointed at him. Clearly, being shot through the heart had not slowed the Russian down any. The situation was in very real danger of turning into a whack-a-mole game if Marshal could not come up with a way to achieve tactical advantage in a region where his adversary had knowledge of the terrain.