“I’m surprised you know about such things.”
“Terraforming? I have explained why terraforming is important to Rho-Torkis. Are you defective, Urdizine? I was not aware Zhoogene memory was so inadequate.”
“No, you amphibious ass. I meant I’m surprised you’ve heard of golf. That’s a Human game where they use sticks to hit balls into sandpits.”
“Many Littoranes will tell you that golf is the greatest contribution the Humans brought to the Perseus Arm. Regrettably, Rho-Torkis is not suited to the sport, although there was a large underground course at Bresca-Brevae.”
“Well, I…” Urdizine shut his mouth. The idea of giant newts hitting little balls around a golf course was the kind of crazy that made the Federation worth fighting for. “Never mind. So these gas-venting golf tees have to exhaust their supply of underground material, right? We’re not seeing something left here a thousand years ago.”
“Correct. The ground spikes require constant maintenance and repositioning every few years. The terraforming of this world must be an actively managed project.”
“Which means more bad guys. But it also gives me a reason to think this place has contact with the outside galaxy. Take me through the gate. I want to see.”
They carried him through to find Malasiah-Nar and Yaelfos-Kzat waiting outside, staring at a distant building complex. “There is an invisible barrier,” Yaelfos-Kzat reported. “Three hundred paces out from the wall, the air changes and becomes difficult to breathe. My skin felt as if its moisture was being sucked out. We cannot go that way.”
“Don’t worry, fellas.” Urdizine pointed to the building on the southern horizon. “Hello, there. I know what you are.”
“You do?” Malasiah-Nar said in wonder. “What is its function?”
“Could be a spaceport, a place where the enemy lives, their manufacturing base, or perhaps it’s something to do with the terraforming. Doesn’t matter, because I know what it means for us. That building is our objective. It’s where we head next. Time to get back to the others, but guys…I think you’ve made Kayshen-Oeyl’s point. She’s the big fish around these parts, and whatever the hell I said that offended her, I shouldn’t have said it. I’ve been a bad green man. So can you be gentler with me on the way back? Please?”
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-One: Urdizine
His pleas fell on deaf ears.
Urdizine’s Littoranes refused to lift him up and continued to drag him along the ground because he’d pissed off Kayshen-Oeyl. When he enquired what he’d said or done to offend her, they told him that if he had to ask, he hadn’t learned his lesson.
He was pretty sure they didn’t have a clue, either.
Changing tack, he suggested to his four Littorane minders that the reason he’d been strapped to a litter was not as a punishment at all. He was a warrior wounded in a fight with the zombie enemy who needed to be carried on a stretcher.
They seemed grateful to buy this revised narrative and lifted his litter to bear it across their backs. In the Legion, he’d learned to grab sleep whenever a chance presented itself, so he spent most of the return journey catching Zs, as the Human jacks used to say for some reason.
When he sensed a change of environment, he opened his eyes and saw that he was being laid on the ground in the midst of a mass of people.
Atavai-Shyn cut away the vines lashing him down. At long last, Urdizine got to his feet.
The people from 343 were there, having brought such equipment as they could: knives, spears, food and drink, rope, nails, and a variety of simple tools. They were mingling with people from other hexes, Humans mostly, but also Zhoogenes, and some very unhappy-looking squids.
One small group of Zhoogenes in particular kept themselves separate and wary. They’d noted Urdizine’s arrival with interest and moved closer.
A woman separated from the group and came to him. “You are wounded?”
Her accent was sludge thick, but she smelled of cut grass, sunset romance, and tender caresses all wrapped up in one exquisite package with a floral bow soaked with aphrodisiac oils.
Crap…
Merging his scent with hers was almost all he could think of.
He wanted to screw her, too, stripping off her leather armor and rolling together on the dead dirt in front of thousands of people.
Mostly, though, he wanted the scent-mingling thing.
The Humans were gravitating toward the knot of Zhoogenes. No wonder the latter were wary. None of these wild Zhoogenes had hormone suppressants.
Delicate white blooms peeked through the girl’s head growth. The aroma was intoxicating.
He realized she’d stopped talking. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
When he tried asking her to repeat herself, all he managed was a croak, so he used the old distraction technique of concentrating on the main sense that wasn’t hard-wired to his loins. His eyes.
She was young and tall, with a rough sheen to her verdant limbs that suggested a physical outdoor life. Her torso was protected by a leather cuirass decorated with polished stones, and her feet by calf-length boots. Long leather strips inlaid with metal studs hung from her hips to protect her upper legs, while being flexible enough for those powerful thigh muscles to propel her with speed and agility.
Urdizine imagined how she would feel if he ran his fingers up the inside of her smooth thighs and underneath the leather strips, diving through the heat between her legs to cup the underswell of her buttocks…
“Urggh. Yeah,” he stuttered. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“Are you injured?” she asked.
Sludge. Sludge.
Her accent was thick as mud, and he tried to fixate on that unappealing quality rather than…all her other ones.
She gestured at his litter. “I do not see an obvious wound upon your body, but you smell of disease. Forgive me, but your scent is empty.”
“The first part, yes. I was wounded in battle with the enemy who captured me and brought me here. They did the same to your ancestors. As for my scent, that’s a conversation for another time, but if I were you, I’d keep well clear of the Humans. They’re the ones who look similar to our kind, but fatter, and whose skin comes in a variety of shades but never green.”
“I understand. We have Humans in our hexagonal world, too. I know the effect we can have on them. When our world was not in crisis, I found this amusing.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll need to have a few conversations on that topic before you reach the civilized parts of the galaxy. I’ll be happy to explain everything in comfort. There’s so much I want to show you, my beautiful…”
Urdizine grimaced and looked away.
She chuckled. “Perhaps I should also keep my distance from you, my strange and scentless man?”
He looked back at her teasing face and tried not to think about the sweet perfume emanating from her head blooms. “We’re trying to get off planet before the monsters eat us. Are you with us?”
The miniature leaves on her head turned inward a little. The effect transformed her face, making it fierce and sharp. “We’ve seen the monsters eating the hex world you call 241. We will not wait to be eaten. I’m not the leader of my people. I shall report back and try to persuade the others to follow you, brave warrior with a hollow soul.”
Kayshen-Oeyl pushed through the confused mass of people, a deep scar of blackened flesh seared across her flank. Blaster bolt. She’d been an inch away from a fatal wound.
She acknowledged him with a curt nod. “Good. You’re back, and you’ve met Sriti. Come with me, both of you. We commanders must meet and plan our next move.”
Urdizine and Sriti glanced at each other.
He smiled. “Urdizine.”
“Hold the line,” she replied with a smile. “Kayshen-Oeyl has told me all I need to know about you, SOTL.”
“I know how to dig drains, and I know how to clog ’em. Hoorah!” He laughed but stopped when it made his ribs scream.
/>
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Two: Urdizine
A spear-toting, leather-clad Zhoogene warrior maiden with head blooms Urdizine could bury himself in from here to eternity. A waddling, giant newt with wound channels as long as his arm. She used to be a middle manager in a fish farm before both the Rebellion and the zombies decided to pay her world a visit at the same time. And him. A sapper of the Legion who couldn’t even laugh without his intestines threatening to spill out of his broken body.
The three leaders updated each other as they pushed through the crowd to get to the gate. Beyond, in 241, the captives were fighting back against the enemy.
They made a bizarre mix.
Impure, as the Cora’s World contingent would probably put it, and already were, he suspected. He worried about the strong beliefs of Captain d’Anje and his fanatics winning dominance over the other Humans in this expanded group.
And what a group it had become!
A thousand captives from Rho-Torkis had seeded 343, but he estimated there were eight thousand here from the world of 241, which was being harvested as they spoke. All but the eldest and youngest were armed, and many carried other supplies. It was an army prepared for a campaign.
An army required both command and control. Even if they made a decision, he couldn’t see a way in which that could be communicated to this horde. The commanders of 241 weren’t even here. They were still fighting in their hex, struggling to extricate more of their people.
From what he’d been told so far, Urdizine couldn’t fault their tactics.
The fighters of 343 had pushed forward into the hex and linked up with those of 241, who’d been taking out bands of what they called Ferals, and either Servants or Devil Men. Together, they’d established a corridor of relative safety the people of 241 were funneling through.
The bulk of 343’s best fighters were a short distance inside 241, securing the exit from attack.
Meanwhile, the neighboring little world of 342 had dispatched Sriti and her small band of Zhoogenes to investigate. As yet, there’d been no news from 243.
They were joined by two commanders with fresh updates from the fighting. Santoza was the Cora’s World deputy for d’Anje, and Tessa Taresse was one of the 241 leaders.
“If all goes to plan,” Urdizine said, “we’ll get people out, shut that gate on the horrors beyond, then make our next move. Before we decide what that is, there’s something I really want answered.”
“You waste time and lives,” Tessa snapped. “Both are too precious to invent answers to questions that don’t matter.”
“But this does matter,” Urdizine countered. “In war, one of your greatest assets is to understand your enemy.”
“In this, the humanoid is correct,” Santoza said, which was unexpected, coming from a paid-up member of the Zhoogenes-are-abominations tradition. Then he returned to form by adding, “His Human tutors in the Legion have trained him well.”
Urdizine rolled his eyes but let the insult go.
“I don’t think our enemy is alive,” Santoza said, “not in the way we understand it. The enemy doesn’t care how many of their individuals die, because their fallen are simply consumed, and I…I guess they’re reborn.”
“I agree,” Urdizine said. “Why do they suck up and store all this digestive biomatter? What feeds off those giant grub tankers? I think there’s a queen class that pops out ugly babies.”
“And those babies won’t take long to mature,” Santoza said.
“How could you possibly know that?” asked Kayshen-Oeyl.
Santoza ran his fingers through his long hair as he thought through his answer. Tessa fumed with impatience, but the others gave Santoza a few precious moments.
“Think about it,” he said. “If the enemy built this world, its individual elements must have combined to be highly effective. However, as individuals, these brutes are mindless. We haven’t come up against anyone with the smarts to see what we’re up to and organize a coherent response.”
Urdizine nodded. “Yeah, they’re pretty dumb.”
“They seem dumb to us because we’re generalists. We excel at adapting to our environment. For most individuals of my species, it takes around 20 Terran years to grow a sensible head on your shoulders. Imagine if these creatures are fully grown in 10 days. That’s nowhere near enough to develop wisdom and knowledge. All you have are the instincts that come with the factory settings.”
“Like I said,” Urdizine pointed out, “there must be some controlling intelligence. Queens.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Terran-origin social insects are dumb, and they don’t have a controlling commander. They act on instinct, and together they make an effective form of distributed intelligence.”
Urdizine wasn’t buying it. “Someone has to develop strategies. They flew us here, remember? Bees don’t pilot spaceships. They don’t build them, either. Unless…Holy Azhanti! We have people here from a dozen worlds. Academics, military, farmers, students, starship engineers, everything. The enemy doesn’t need to develop space travel if they can zombify species who can. All they need to do is bind them to the will of the distributed intelligence Santoza described.”
“I think I would prefer to be eaten than have my mind hollowed out and bound to those monsters,” Tessa said.
“If I’m right,” Urdizine said, “we could be facing a social colony stretching over hundreds of star systems, thousands, maybe even intergalactic. And here’s the worst thing. We can never communicate with it because it doesn’t want anything. It’s simply acting on instinct. Not so much an enemy to fight in war and negotiate with so much as an infection, relentless, tireless, immortal, unless we burn it out of the entire universe. And if it really has already overwhelmed the civilizations of hundreds of star systems, it must be damned good at what it does.”
“Your hypothesis is astonishing,” Kayshen-Oeyl said. “How do you come up with such ideas?”
Urdizine shrugged. “Serving in the Legion can be incredibly dull at times. I filled the boredom with horror holos. Zombie plagues and interstellar body-snatching hivemind invasions are commonplace. Feels like I’m inside a holo I’ve watched before.”
“Foolish as this may sound,” she said, “I would like to know how the zombie mind-control invasions are defeated in your holo-dramas.”
“Yeah. I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that.” Urdizine grimaced. “They aren’t.”
* * *
They were in the middle of a battle.
When the speculation had stalled, Santoza and Tessa headed back to the fight beyond the gate.
“Their departure is regrettable,” Kayshen-Oeyl said. “We have not yet established our next objective. I began this day hoping to make a covert reconnaissance. I think we have gone a little beyond that. Urdizine, you suggested we press on to the building outside the hexes. Make your argument. Why should we do this?”
“Because it’s likely to contain technology, unlike all these hex cells, where the most advanced gear we’ve found are door controls and captured blasters. I don’t know what they do there, something to do with the terraforming is my best guess, but it could be where the queen monster has her palace. For all we know, those tanker creatures slither up to the factory and squeeze their red slurry into meat patties. Perhaps the real purpose behind this planet’s setup is for the zombie bosses to sell the part-digested bodies of their captives to an unsuspecting galaxy.”
“Death,” Sriti said. “It is more likely that death awaits us there.”
He nodded grimly. “Damn right. We may all die on this planet, but if we do, I’d like to know why. And frankly—” he gestured to the thousands of desperate refugees milling around them, “—that’s a lot of people to evacuate on a stolen ship. Lot of mouths to feed and water, too. If we open up still more hexes, and they choose to join us, the numbers you see here could be just the start.”
“Do not let doubts cloud your judgement,” Sriti told him. “I have seen the monsters on th
e other side of the gate. Now we know the fate that awaits us, how could we continue our comfortable living, knowing our children or grandchildren will be consumed in horror? There is no turning back. I stand with Urdizine. We must go forward.”
“Transport out of here is going to be a hard ask,” Urdizine said. “Acquiring interstellar comms is far more likely. Even if we don’t make it offworld, I want to send a message to the galaxy to warn them what’s happening. The Legion will respond. Our deaths will be avenged. That’s something worth fighting and dying for.”
Sriti embraced him.
It was so unexpected, he didn’t have enough time to enjoy the sensation of pressing against her, or the heady perfume of her blooms.
“You speak well, Urdizine. I will inform our king, and he will follow my recommendation. We shall ready food, equipment, and weapons, then we shall meet you at this terraforming building or meatpacking plant. Whatever it might be.”
“Wow,” Urdizine said. “You have a king?”
She bristled. “Of course. He is my father.”
Urdizine whistled. “So you’re a genuine, beautiful, leather-clad, warrior princess. Wait, am I dreaming this?”
She kissed him. Her lips tasted of bronze fire, with a lava-hot tang from her pheromone secretions.
His hormone suppressor prevented him from giving his own unique chemical reply, but she didn’t pull away at his hollowness. When he licked the inside of her upper lip, where the pheromone glands were densest, she gently moaned with pleasure.
Hold the Line (Chimera Company Book 5) Page 13