He soon discovered the island was an insignificant mound of a place. That meant the squad would have to find another island, with a more commanding outlook, before it got dark.
Menon sighed. Nothing about their mission was proving easy. He recalled the meeting at Shellport that had sent them off in such haste to the most remote part of the continent.
“You speak into that thing there and this boss, this head man at the other end, can hear you – even though he’s all the way over on another planet?” said Hudnee, in disbelief.
“Yes,” said Menona. She had been closest to the pale strangers who had provided medical support in the civil war that had ended when the militia had captured the capital, Roum. So Menona had been the best choice to take over the communications device Feedic and Salaan had left behind. “He’s a mining boss on a planet named Earth. Well, actually he’s not on Earth, but nearby, and ah . . ,” she tailed off. Habna looked up sharply, and made an imperious gesture with her head.
“His name is Finch, and he’s a master miner, just like you’re a master builder,” said Menona hurriedly. Habna nodded approval.
“And he says the Invardii . . ,” she continued.
“Who caused the rains and the changes to our weather, and who the pale ones are fighting,” interrupted Hudnee.
“Yes,” said Menona. “The ones Earth are fighting, have started landing on some of the planets in the Spiral Arm and mining special minerals called ‘rare earths’.”
“The Spiral what?’ said Hudnee, lost on a number of the points she was making.
“That’s not important,” said Habna. “The point is that the lights that have been reported around the eastern wastelands might have something to do with the Invardii.”
“Who we really don’t like,” said Hudnee with a growl. This much he had grasped firmly. The change in the weather, the loss of whole species of plants and animals, and the deaths of many of the people of his world, were due directly to the Invardii.
“But there are always lights over the swamps,” said Menon, who had traveled wider and further than most in his lifetime. “Colored gases bubble up there all the time, and in places there are lights that move over the ooze and through the scrub at night.”
“Some of these reports are from experienced sailors, Menon,” said Habna, “and they suggest much more than that. You can respect their judgment, can’t you?”
Menon nodded grudgingly.
“And swamp lights didn’t take half the skin off that fisherman’s back,” said Habna.
There was silence in Habna’s front room, where the heads of the Shellport militia often held their meetings. The fisherman’s story was almost too strange to be true.
Two fishermen had been caught in a wind shift off the southern plateau, and had no choice but to run before the squally weather while it battered them from the south-west. Their dooplehuel had been blown round the southern part of Hud and past the eastern wasteland.
Sailing back after the blow, they had decided to save half a day by cutting through the Barrens, but darkness found them still some distance from open sea on the other side. Setting up camp on one of the islands they noticed flickering lights under the water, but soon dropped off into an exhausted sleep.
One of them woke much later to a loud, roaring sound. He saw a glowing orange shape, several times the size of either fisherman, then something hit him with such force that he was knocked unconscious.
When he came to he was floating in the sea, and one side of his body was a blaze of pain. Barely able to keep afloat, he had struggled toward a dark shape he could see in the pre-dawn light, and just made it to the shore of a small island.
Later, in daylight, the Barrens looked as if nothing at all had happened, but there was no sign of the other fisherman. When the pain had eased a little he was lucky enough to spot the dooplehuel, floating upside down, and managed to turn it the right way up and bail it out.
By the time he got back to the southern plateau, and his fishing village, infection had worked its way into the burns that covered one side of his body. He was picked up delirious and severely dehydrated. His recovery had been slow, but news of what had happened to him had traveled quickly through every village on Hud.
Habna looked meaningfully at Hudnee, knowing this story added weight to what Menona had been saying. “One of head man Finch’s people says that something like this orange shape was recorded on Uruk,” she said, “another planet attacked by the Invardii.”
“There are people on other planets than Ert?” said Hudnee, bewildered all over again. He had just been getting used to the idea that there were many planets out there, and had not expected there would be ‘people’ of some sort on so many of them. “Are they all similar to the pale strangers who helped us?”
“Earth,” corrected Habna, “and no, they are not all like the ones from Earth.”
There was a long silence.
“But we must act now,” said Menona firmly. Habna nodded in agreement.
“If Finch and the people of Earth can get more information about what’s happening at the Barrens, they might be able to do something about it.”
“Just because the civil war on Hud is over,” said Habna, “it doesn’t mean our responsibilities are over. Remember who ruined our weather and started this chain of miseries.”
“All right, all right!” said Hudnee, throwing his hands up in a gesture of surrender. The only thing worse than being ganged up on by two women, was being ganged up on by two women who were right.
The war between the Invardii and the rest of the races out there – however many races there were, he thought wonderingly – needed the people of Hud to play their part too. The older members of the militia were on peacekeeping duties among the Descendants, and most of the younger members had volunteered to be pilots for the people of Ert. No, Earth, he corrected himself.
Battrick, Tumbril, Carakas and the ArchOrdinate were overseeing the town council in Roum, making sure that Hud’s largest population center ran smoothly. Well, almost smoothly. I’m so glad to be a long way from the politicking in Roum, thought Hudnee gratefully.
Meanwhile, on the edge of the Barrens, the men Hudnee had sent to investigate the strange reports about the place were trying to find somewhere for a camp. It was particularly important they find a lookout point with a good view across the dry and lifeless islands before them.
At least they had some idea of what to expect, reflected Menon, as he led the way along the shore toward another island that looked like it had some height to it. Though the idea of strange underwater lights and towering orange forms wasn’t actually all that useful, he muttered to himself.
If the fisherman’s story was to be believed, the Invardii base was somewhere in the shallow sea at the heart of the Barrens. It would be a good idea for the Shellport squad to keep their heads down and stay as inconspicuous as possible – and post sentries during the night.
The stretch from the smaller island to the larger one looked like it would be extremely difficult to traverse. The river they had come in on curved away from the islands from that point on, and would take them no further on their journey. The only way to the next island was across a stretch of undulating ooze, an unappetizing route streaked here and there with many-colored chemical traces and scattered with the silvery-gray of salt bush.
At least there were no channels of open water to contend with. There were reptilian grud-nak that lived in the poisonous soup. They always came to the sounds of anything crossing a stretch of water in the swamp.
He suspected they were sensitive to vibration. The bigger ones grew legs and stayed in the more solid parts of the swamp, closer to land – where they often found unwary prey – but the smaller ones were more like an armored eel. They had tiny limbs that seemed to have no function, scaled skin tougher than herd beast hide, and row after row of impossibly sharp teeth.
The second island, when the squad finally floundered their way across to it, turned out to be
one of the largest in the Barrens. As a bonus they were able to clean the ooze off themselves at the seaward end of it, once they’d hiked around the shoreline past the last of the swamps. Menon and Metris decided to camp in a concealing hollow near the top of the island, and the squad set up for the night.
Darkness came on quickly, and after a cold meal of pre-soaked grains, seaweed and dried meat, the squad set two sentries for the first shift of the night. They were set at each end of the hollow, and Menon figured they could swap ends every so often to help them stay awake.
On a planet with no moon, the people of Hud had developed exceptional night vision, and Menon knew he could trust his sentries to keep his squad safe. As darkness fell, the rest of the men settled in for an uneasy night. Some were still awake when one of the sentries hissed urgently to the other, not long before the middle of the night.
CHAPTER 4
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In a few moments, every man in the squad was crouched along the seaward side of the hollow, staring in fascination at the light display out to sea. Bars of light raced past under the water, first one way then the other, each looping around the same circuit. It started offshore from the island and reached well out into the shallow sea that lay within the circle of islands.
Then the sea turned milky white, as a great cloud of silt rose from some activity on the sea bottom. The looping bars of light redoubled their speed, and a faintly-glowing, iridescent mound rose up in the center of the display until it was clear of the surface.
When the circuit was one continuous and intense ring of light, a beam leaped from the middle of the mound, piercing the atmosphere of Hud. A long, dark shape passed at extraordinary speed up the beam of light, and was lost to sight. The ring lost some of its intensity, then brightened again. Three more of the dark pods were ejected from the ring in rapid succession.
“What in the name of the Prophet is that?” whispered the squad member on Menon’s left.
“A wagon,” said Metris, on the other side of the man.
“You what?” said Menon in a low whisper.
“Herd beast with a wagon,” repeated Metris. “Think about it. Menona’s mining boss contact said the Invardii were after some sort of special minerals. What are they going to do with them when they’ve found some? Send them back ‘home’, wherever ‘home’ is, same as we would.”
Menon smiled grimly. “Herd beast with a wagon,” he repeated. “Same as we would.” He paused. “You’ve got a mind for the extraordinary, Metris, I’ll give you that.”
The little show didn’t last for long. Once another salvo of three pods had been ejected by the ring, the lights that flashed back and forth around the circuit began to slow down.
“Well, I guess that’s the kind of stuff the mining boss on Earth wants to know about,” whispered Menon.
The last of the lights below them winked out.
“Try to get some sleep,” said Menon briskly, after nothing else had happened for a while.
“Sentries, remember to set a second watch in the middle of the night, same as we planned. We’ve still got to make it back to Shellport in one piece, and I want you all sharp. Now turn in!”
The men tried to make themselves comfortable along the side of the hollow once again, and the stillness of the Barrens returned. A light breeze blew from the land, and pushed any sounds from the sea away from them.
Despite this disadvantage, a sharp-eyed sentry noticed something just after the second watch had begun. The surface of the sea heaved upward a good distance offshore, boiling away from something underneath it. He got the attention of the other sentry, then turned to rouse the others.
Menon came awake at the first light touch on his shoulder.
“Something breaking the surface,” reported the sentry in a soft whisper. “Something huge, with a flat top. It’s got a number of, ah, legs of some sort.”
“Now it’s stepping out onto the beach,” said the second sentry. He paused for a moment, and Menon joined him at the edge of the hollow.
“Hell’s teeth,” said the man, “it’s halfway up the slope already, I’ve never seen anything move so fast!”
Menon had already turned to the sleeping squad, and startled them awake with a prodigious bellow.
“Scramble, scramble, scramble!” he yelled, as he lifted one man at his feet and pitched him over the edge of the hollow. The man rolled away into the darkness.
The ‘scramble’ code was a scatter signal drilled again and again into the squad, and others quickly followed the first down the slope. They rolled a couple of times and then found their feet further down. From their they ran in a dogleg pattern toward the swamp at the bottom.
Those who had not cleared the hollow were suddenly pushed to the ground by a force they could not see. The strange craft that had come out of the sea now stood over them, a many-legged contraption like one of the Descendant Pilars, with its rows of supports. Nearly half the squad still remained, helplessly pinned, too slow in their response to the scatter signal.
Then bright light blinded them, overlaid so suddenly on their night vision. Menon closed his eyes to shut out the glare, then opened them to make the thinnest of slits between his eyelids. He saw a vast metal leg on one side of him, and realized it was a machine that had them pinned down.
It must be a machine made by the Invardii as some sort of guard for their base in the waters below. He tried to move his arm, and succeeded in raising his elbow a little, then dropped it again under the immense strain.
Something dropped from the shape overhead, and an orange light flared into being at one end of the hollow. Menon used all his strength to turn his head, and found himself staring at a monstrous shape built something like a man, but many times bigger. The surface of it moved unceasingly, a dull orange fire that whirled and eddied back and forth.
The shape had recognizable arms and legs, but the head was a low, flattened dome barely higher than the shoulders. It was studded with projections that clicked and whirred and panned across the ground in front of it as if they were searching for something. Several of them locked onto Menon, as if they were deciding what sort of threat he might be.
He made a desperate effort to get to his kit bag, which lay halfway between him and Metris at the bottom of the hollow. He succeeded in reaching his hand out and touching it. The orange shape took one huge stride and stood on his bare arm, pinning it to the ground.
A moment of pure agony surged through Menon as the skin burned off his arm, and then mercifully the pain ceased as the nerve endings were destroyed. Another orange shape flared into being at the other end of the hollow.
“The rod,” he called desperately to Metris, “Menona’s rod in my bag!”
Metris understood what he was saying. Menona had presented them with a short, thick rod from Finch, the mining boss of the Earth people, just before they’d left to make their way to the Barrens.
She’d been told by Feedic’s communication device to take a dooplehuel offshore and wait, one evening on dusk. The rod had come out of the sky attached to a cloth, and landed nearby. It had floated heavily on the water.
Metris struggled to reach the bag, and succeeded in pulling it to him. As he freed the rod from it, the orange shape at the other end of the hollow stepped forward and went to put a foot on his chest. He rolled away, but the outlandish orange leg landed on his shoulder, and pain blazed through his muscles. His hide jerkin burned away, and his skin cooked under it.
“Twist it,” yelled Menon. “Just grab the ends and twist one of them forward!”
Metris pulled his damaged arm forward and took the other end of the rod. Grasping it firmly he twisted with the hand that was half under him.
There was a soft click and the orange shapes vanished.
In their place were two cylinders, half as long as a man, with a bulge in the middle. They were covered in strange patterns and odd markings. There was a moment’s delay, and then the force that was holding the men down vanished, and
the squad members struggled to their feet. The machine over them stood still and silent.
Metris grabbed Menon’s bag and stuffed the rod back into it.
“Run,” said Menon breathlessly. “Head for the boats. It’s our only chance!”
For Menon and Metris, their injuries were in a way fortunate. They were not losing blood, and they could still use their legs to run. Menon clasped the raw wound of his arm to his chest with his good arm, and made the best speed he could down the slope. The smell of his own burned flesh made him feel sick.
At the bottom of the slope they had to wade through the swamp ooze again, and this was more difficult on the return journey. The squad had already cut up the best places on the journey to the island.
Menon was half way across the ooze when he heard a distant wet thump, and the crash of scrub breaking as a powerful body bulldozed its way through the swamp. He knew what that meant.
“Grud-nak!” he shouted. An adult, a land dwelling reptile with fully developed legs, and a big one by the sound of it. His squad had the worst luck in the whole of Hud, thought Menon desperately. It must have smelled the burnt flesh downwind.
That’s all we are to a beast like that, he thought, meat for the taking.
Menon and Metris struggled on, wading through the treacle-like ooze of the swamp, while the rest of the squad closed behind them in a protective line.
The grud-nak came at the men with a rush. The squad would have preferred sharpened poles so they could keep their distance, but they had to rely on their short stabbing swords. Against the grud-nak’s armored hide these had little effect.
Rows of lethally sharp teeth closed on one of the swords and wrenched it away, while the squad man retreated behind the others. The beast hesitated, and when it opened its mouth again bright blood smeared the side of its mouth.
“Cut itself on that one!” cheered one of the men. Then the grud-nak lunged forward again, and the man lost his footing in the treacherous ooze. The reptilian monster rolled over him, powerful legs churning the surface of the swamp as it lunged again, snapping at the others.
Invardii Box Set 2 Page 21