A Planet for Emily by M S Lawson - HTML preview

“Are they birds?”

“Look too big.”

They jogged into what was obviously the building’s reception area. A big display window was still intact, there was a couch, paintings on the walls, and a desk. The furniture was tattered but otherwise they might have been in a reception room anywhere. Rods and Suzanne knelt behind the desk, Suzanne still clutching her Glock, the weight of which she now found to be reassuring. Then she remembered her sister would have been there.

“Eve!” she called.

“Cruise, quiet a moment, until we see what’s up with our new arrivals. If you have to look, look around the desk, don’t poke your head over it. Igor, back into that passage just behind that door. No action until I command.”

“No action, I am behind,” said Igor.

In the subsequent stillness, Suzanne heard rustling and scrapings outside. She peered around the side of the desk and glimpsed one of the creatures through the grimy display window. Reptilian wings folded back, the creature was a cross between pictures of gargoyles she had seen and of Earth monkeys, moving on bent legs and arms as monkeys do. She lost sight of it and then heard Chee! Chee! Perhaps the creatures were deciding what to do next. Looking around she realized there was a tablet on a shelf just under the desk. She transferred Mr. Glock to her left hand, took the table out and flicked it on. There was no security, somehow it still had power, and the last page accessed was still up.

The screen was headed:

“The Hermitage Safety Warnings”

“Hermitage?” thought Suzanne, and then remembered that the big sign in the reception area, above the desk behind which she now cowered said “The Hermitage”.

There was a list of dangers, including one which said “flying creatures”. She opened it.

 

“Flying creatures, akin to flying monkeys from the mound,” it read. “Hostile. Very dangerous. Do not approach. If you see them run for The Hermitage. Call for assistance. They can open doors. They will enter rooms.”

 

She tapped Rods on the shoulder with the screen. His eyes widened as he read it.

“They’re looking around the shuttle, I think,” he whispered. Suzanne could hear them calling. “And Max says she can see more creatures moving from the mound, not flying. It’s time to leave.”

“What about Eve?”

“Don’t seem to be anyone here, Cruise and we won’t help her by getting trapped in this place. We’ll come back at night and..”

They heard a “Chee! Chee!” And a breath of air as the doors opened. She could hear bare feet flapping on the carpet. Suzanne just had time to gab Mr. Glock in both hands when one of the gargoyles jumped on the desk above her, arms upraised, fangs bared. Suzanne pushed Mr. Glock in front of her, arms straight and steady as she could, as Rods had taught her, and let her finger slip onto the trigger. At the last moment, another fragment of Rods advice leapt into her mind about firing too high and she dropped her aim to the creature’s waist.

Blam! Blam!

The creature vanished. Another shot from Rods, echoing in the room.

“Igor! Fire!”

A single burst of machine gun fire blew out the display window, deafening Suzanne, her ears already ringing from her own shots.

“Up Cruise,” he heard Rods say through the ringing in her ears. We’ve won this round.”

Suzanne got up. The gargoyle that had jumped onto the desk lay dead, one hole in the chest – she had been aiming lower- and another which had made a mess of its forehead. She thought the creatures looked more obscene dead than alive. Rods had disposed of his creature with a single shot and Igor had almost cut the third in two with one burst of his weapon.

“I always wanted to see the machine gun in action,” said Rods, gleefully. “Cruise, well done!”

“Huh!” said Suzanne, still in a daze.

“Well done!”

“Oh right, yes. Thank you,” she said without conviction.

“But you left one bit out.”

“Oh! What was that?”

“You should have said ‘take that’ or ‘eat this’, or ‘don’t snarl at me’ or whatever, before you fired.”

“I wasn’t concerned with bandying words with the creature,” she said, “just killing it”. She put Mr. Glock back in her coat pocket, aware that her hand was shaking.

Rods was by then too busy peering out the reception area door to pay much attention to the response. “Two more of those creatures keeping their distance, wondering what’s happened to the advance party, and scouting for the party of creatures I can see coming down that mound.”

Suzanne could also see them through the hole where the display window had been, but at that distance they looked like dots.

“Time for us to go,” said Rods. “Igor! Quick scan through the structure. Double time. You’re looking for any colonists; and grab another of the screens on the way through. We’ll see what Max can do with it.”

“Scan for colonists, Take screen. Return here.”

“No, come out the far end,” said Rods, pointing deep into the structure. “The western end. We’ll pick you up in the shuttle. And keep in Comm.

“Exit wastern end, keep in comm.”

“Good robot. Now go.”

They made it back to the shuttle without incident, Suzanne took Mr. Glock out again and kept him ready, one eye on the flying dots she could see to their North, until they got inside. Rods shifted the craft to the far end of the structure. Igor emerged carrying a screen but without having found anyone. They were just about to lift off again, the two remaining flying creatures obviously keeping an eye on them, when Suzanne spotted movement at the edge of forest of stunted trees. It was a colonist – a bearded man, stumbling, dragging one leg and waving frantically. Suzanne got up to help him, but Rods restrained her.

“We’ll send Igor and move the shuttle to him. We need to be fast now. I think our friends from the mound, whatever they are, are almost on the other side of the structure. See our flying friends?”

Suzanne looked up. The flying creatures – there were now five of them – were almost directly above them. Igor jumped out the port hatch on Rods’ orders while the trader let the shuttle drift towards the forest. Igor had picked up the colonist and was jogging back, when Suzanne first saw the walking creatures. They were quite different from the flyers, and something like Zards she thought – lizard creatures – but the features were much coarser and bodies heavier. The Zards she had seen in pictures were slim and graceful. To her astonishment, the newcomers were carrying large shields and spears.

“Those aren’t Zards,” she said.

“No – Igor, get moving! – they’re early Zards, like Neaderthals are to us, a branch of the Zard family evolutionary tree that didn’t work out.”

“But what are they doing here? The Zard home planet is on the other side of Earth, and aren’t they supposed to be extinct? And aren’t they going to charge the shuttle?”

About 10 of the proto-Zards had formed up and brought their spears down.

“All very good points cruise…” Igor staggered in through the side hatch with the colonist and Rods lifted off with the creatures a few paces away. Suzanne could hear a deep-throated roar. “But we’ll save the big picture questions until we’ve spoken to our new friend and looked at the stuff on the screens we took. Just as well they didn’t throw those stickers they’ve got. Might have done some damage.”

They did a slow circuit of the building at a safe distance. There were perhaps 50 of the proto-Zards all starting malignantly at the craft, shaking their spears. They appeared to be yelling. The flying creatures kept their distance from a craft that was many times larger than they were.

“Can you shoot at them?” asked Suzanne.

Rods smiled.

“You’re enthusiastic. The shuttle is a civilian craft. It isn’t armed. We’ll bug out and let them think they’ve chased us away. We have some research to do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

His name was Con. His beard was matted, his clothes were shredded. He was badly bruised and cut, starving, and his leg was broken, but he had the spear of a proto-Zard as a trophy from a fight which he had been using as a crutch. There was dried blood on the spear blade, but it was a Zard’s not his, Con said. They had treated the leg and the cuts under the direction of The Max’s medical unit, and propped him up on the bunk in the spare room while they talked.

“Unusual to find one alone,” said Con, munching on a food bar. “But he was prowling around, looking for a stray human to massacre and make a name for himself, probably. He walked right by where I was hiding, so I hit him with a rock and grabbed the spear. The blow would have felled a bear on earth, but he kicked out and broke my leg, and tried to come after me. That’s when I stabbed him.”

Con had been bucked up by the food and pain killers to the point of going through the motions of hitting and stabbing with his spare hand while telling his tale.

“Quite a fight,” said Rods. “When did this happen?”

“’bout a week ago.”

“When were the other colonists taken?”

“A few weeks before that – three, maybe. They didn’t bother us much to begin with, except for the flying creatures which are horrible things. We didn’t have any weapons, except clubs and pointed sticks and sling shots we’d been able to make, but that was enough for a while against the flyers, although we had some bad injuries. The soldier proto-Zards you saw were hostile if approached, but otherwise didn’t seem bothered. Then one colonist took it into his head to go up there, up to the mound. Keep talking about universal peace and how communication was everything. That was the last we saw of him, but we didn’t dare go up and ask for him back. Then they came for us. We had set a watch but they must not have seen anything. The Zards were efficient about it, I have to give it to them. They surrounded the building, rounded up everyone and marched them off. Left a few behind to comb through the forests. I only slipped out by a miracle, and avoiding them was even tougher. Just me as far as I know.”

“Was my sister among those taken?” asked Suzanne.

“As far as I know,” said Con. “I saw her the day before the raid and I didn’t see her afterwards.”

“Your own partner?”

“Emma. She must’ve also been taken, but there was no way I could confirm that. I looked for bodies, but if anyone was killed they took the bodies.”

“But what do they want with humans?” asked Rods. “Use them as slaves?”

Con shrugged.

“We looked at what we had on Zard cultures and these creatures, and decided that, unlike their evolutionary cousins, the proto-Zards probably just didn’t know what to do about us. We weren’t a danger and weren’t competing with them for food, so they just left us alone. The guy who went up there – Tod – must have changed that somehow. Must have made them realise we were useful for something but I dunno what. Say, what is this music?’

Suzanne then became aware that the ship’s music track had returned to Gilbert and Sullivan.

 

Three little maids from school are we

Pert as a school-girl well can be

Filled to the brim with girlish glee

Three little maids from school

 

“It’s from the Mikado,” said Rods.

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Having been snatched from sure death, you should accept the musical tastes of your hosts.”

“Umph.”

“To return to our narrative, what I can’t understand, Con, is where did all this come from?” said Rods. “Why these primitive Zards here of all places?”

Con shrugged again.

“Near as we can tell, and we did our best with what we could find and check, the terra-forming side of it was started by a group from Earth. They thought it would make good real estate – a place that would be a focus for all the surrounding colonies. Make a separate republic. The hermitage was built by them. Then the Zards arrived, after Cross-roads we think, killed the humans who had put in the terra-forming work and added all the big animals you can see. Then they brought the proto-Zards back from extinction, complete with basic weapons. Early scans showed some sort of facility in the uplands at the other end of the valley, so maybe that’s where all the work was done, but we never had a chance to go there. As to why, maybe it was some lunatic fringe group that wanted to give the primitive Zards the homeland they never had, or something.”

“Maybe whoever did this will come back checking on their work, backed by the Zard fleet,” said Rods, “and not be impressed to find humans shooting up their test subjects?”

“Maybe,” said Con, “but I don’t think the Zard government knows about it, or will be much pleased with an alternative Zard species coming to life many thousands of years after evolution had ruled it out on the home planet. Would a human government be pleased at someone restarting the Neathertals, particularly if they’re carrying basic weapons? You say the ones you saw today had shields of some kind and charged in an organized way?”

Rods and Suzanne nodded.

“That’s new. I’ve seen them with spears, but shields? And they didn’t charge in a group before. Maybe they’re developing. There’s something deep going on here, with powerful financial backing, but I don’t think it’s official Zard business.”

“Well, okay, we’ll put the origins story to one side for the moment,” said Rods. “We still have a lot of missing colonists who must be in that mound.” He was going to add if any were left alive, but stopped himself in time. “So we have to go in.”

“How are you going to do that?” asked Con. “You’ve got weapons I suppose. You going to go in guns blazing, like in those old movies?”

“Maybe it’ll come to that. But the basic social structure is, you’ve got the queen on top, the one with the brains who stays inside the mound and has some sort of telepathic link with the rest, then there are the flying gargoyles as scouts, as a sort of dependent species. Then there is a separate warrior caste for the guards-muscle work and the workers who do the dirty stuff.”

Con nodded. “We saw the workers once. There should be images of it I can access from that tablet you took. They came out to cut some wood and drag it into the mound.”

“Wood? What they’re making fires in there.”

“Never seen any smoke. Must be building something.”

“Anyway, it’s the workers that worry me. Like messing with worker ants in an ant colony. They’re not fighters but they can rip and tear and are strong, and care nothing for their own lives. But they’re daylight animals, right?”

“We’ve never seen of the proto-Zards at night,” said Con, “although they must be able to come out at night, they would mostly prefer daylight.”

“So they sleep? What I’ve read of the Zards, the hive of actual Zards has a distinct sleep cycle. Some of the fighters and gargoyles keep awake. The rest have downtime.”

“Yes, I suppose,” said Con. “If you can take out the sentries and the gargoyles who are always hovering above the vent entrance, and do it quietly you may have a chance. But you don’t know where the prisoners are, and if you wake up the hive looking for them you’ll be in a world of hurt.”

“Won’t be any internal guards, except maybe around the prisoners. Why should there be? It’s close to being one organism.”

“Well sure, but think,” said Con. “If you fire your guns at any point, that’ll wake the hive. If you find the colonists, they may be sick or too weak to walk, or wounded or crippled. I thought a lot about it while I was hanging around wondering what to do next. If you had a few extra people with machine guns and a flame thrower, maybe to take on the workers.”

“Igor here is pretty good.”

“You’re going in?” asked Suzanne.

“Can’t leave the colonists there, Cruise. Gotta try.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“You are not.”
“I am too,” said Suzanne folding her arms.

“Your captain says you can’t come.”

“Then you have a mutiny on your hands. Last time I checked the airlock was in good working order so you can always threaten me with being spaced again; or with being chucked in that brig of yours, but it’s my sister in there and a load of potential passengers who you might scare off.”

“They’ve been in there five weeks. Being scared is the least of their worries. They’d follow the devil if he came for them”

“They’ll need sympathy and someone to move them in the right direction. It’s not a one man, one robot job. It’s a one woman, one man, one robot job, and I have family in there.”

Rods thought for a moment and threw up his hand. “It’s your funeral Cruise. I tried to talk you out of it.”

“I’d offer to come,” said Con, but I might slow you down.”

“You stay here,” said Rods. “There’s a few things you can do from the ship if things go badly. We’ll set things up to keep in contact. I’ll put comms links in spots so you’ll know what’s happened. If worse comes to worst you can use Ira to plant explosives to blow a hole in the mound.”

“Explosives?”

“Sure, plastique. C4 – venerable technology maybe, but still good.”

“I know what C4 is,” exclaimed Con, “but wherever did you get it out here?”.

“Surprising what you can pick up in the remainder bins in some places.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

 

Suzanne pulled on the protective coat Rods had given to her, only to find that her arms were completely lost in the sleeves. The image she saw in the mirror in her cabin was that of a shapeless blob. The coat was meant to be a jacket but fell almost to her knees.

“It’s too big for me,” she yelled.

“Roll up the sleeves and put on the belt, Cruise,” Rods yelled back from the wardroom.

Suzanne rolled up the sleeves, belted up the coat and strapped on a soldier’s helmet which Rods had also produced from the lockers but again was too big for her; inspected herself, despairingly in the closet mirror and went into the wardroom.

Rods laughed.

“A fiercesome sight.”

“I look ridiculous.”

“What do you want to be, fashionable or alive? Do you have any trouble moving?”

“No, the coat is light. The material is strange.”

“It moves like cloth but if you hit it hard it forms into panels. Should stop bullets, and maybe even knives which are a different proposition, but you will be sore afterwards. Amazing stuff.”

“Is this another item from these remainder bins?”

“Something like that. The military that escaped the Zards ended up selling whatever they had just to eat. What about your head? That helmet is too heavy for you.”

“It’s light, and I strapped it on tight liked you said.” Suzanne moved her head from side to side to demonstrate.

“Good! You’ve set your ear piece in place? Remember your mike.” Rods pulled the microphone on Suzanne’s helmet down and switched on the helmet comms unit. “We’ll be able to talk to one another.” He touched a switch on his own helmet and the earpiece in Suzanne’s left ear came alive. “Everyone online. Con, Igor, Max?”

“Here,” they chorused. Con was on the bridge and Igor was already in the shuttle.

“Suzanne?”

“Roger!”

“Who’s Roger?”

“Isn’t that what people say when checking in?”

“It’s good enough. You have Mr. Glock for close encounters and Mr. Sig Saur as a backup date?”

Suzanne produced both weapons from different pockets, demonstrated that Mr. Glock had been tied onto her belt with a lanyard and put them back.

“Ammunition loaded?”

“Full magazines and spares in pockets and boxes more with Igor in the shuttle, sir.” She gave Rods what she imagined was a military salute.

“Battlefield conditions, Cruise,” said Rods rubbing his hands together. “No saluting. We’re set. The equipment’s loaded and the nest’s had time to settle down for the night. Let’s get some in Cruise!” He held out his fist to her. “We’re assault infantry.”

She looked at Rods and then at the fist, puzzled.

“You’re meant to hit my fist with yours.”

“Oh. Okay.” She did so, gently.

“That’s not the assault infantry style.”

“I’m not assault whatever,” she protested. “I’m a cruise director with a gun.”

Rods positioned the shuttle well above the gargoyles guarding the hive entrance. He attached the mask to the vacuum-suit he was wearing, as he would be starting in thin atmosphere, and strapped on the grav pack he had shown to Suzanne when they were preparing to visit the valley.

“Stay in the shuttle cockpit, Cruise,” he said through the radio link. “If I can clear the entrance without raising the alarm Max will drop the shuttle close to the hole, then get out and join me. Take care.”

With that he stepped into the airlock and dropped out the other side.

 

Rods had jumped before, but only in vacuums and was surprised by the rush of thin air. He tumbled and gasped.

“What’s wrong?” said Suzanne, who was watching the whole thing on Rod’s helmet cam.

Rods slowed his descent then flipped on his front. A faint memory of pictures of people falling through an atmosphere on earth – parachutists, was the term – made him spread out his arms and legs. After a couple of tries in the steadily thickening air, he found he could balance.

“What’s happening?”

“Cruise, this is fun!”

Back in the shuttle, Suzanne sniffed.

Rods checked the screen strapped to his wrist, set up to show his height and where he was in relation to the hive entrance. Almost right above it, but drifting. The grav pack could also move laterally. He adjusted it to drift back and looked for the gargoyle sentries. The planet had no moon to speak of but only a few, thin clouds to obscure the starlight. Once low enough to depressurise he did so, pushing back his breathing mask – after years of controlled atmospheres, the cold wind on his face was a delight – and slipped on light-amplification goggles. There they were! The airborne gargoyle sentries were just below him; one a hundred meters or so higher than the other. He drew his favorite pistol – the latest in a long-line of Heckler & Koch weapons equipped with a laser sight and, at a small additional cost, a silencer. Rods had got the weapon in a side deal at about the same time as the shuttle (where the special forces grade weapon had come from wasn’t his concern) and had practiced with it in stopovers at Fin’s Reef until he was lethal. But he had never had a chance to use it in earnest. It was far too high-powered for anti-jacking work. Now the weapon’s time had come, however, he found he had trouble fitting his gloved finger between the trigger and trigger guard. For the moment any killing that had to be done would be up close and personal.

The higher gargoyle called – a caw! sound much like that of a crow on Earth but high and clear in the wind. Thinking he had been spotted, Rods stayed his descent for the moment, hanging there, adjusting for wind drift. It was just a routine call. The other gargoyle answered, fortunately without even looking up. Rods continued drifting slightly down towards his target. The creature sensed the trader’s presence a moment before Rods wrapped one arm around its body and pressed the muzzle of his silencer against its skull, and pulled the trigger.

The dead creature proved surprisingly heavy, dragging Rods down He dropped the pistol – it was tied securely to his belt – and yanked on the control stick to prevent an unseemly collision with the second sentinel. He steadied and, still holding the first gargoyle - he dare not let it fall – Rods dropped on the second, wrapping his legs around it, and grabbing the pistol with his free hand. The creature’s head turned to see a huge alien creature about to engulf it, and opened its mouth to call an alarm. Like its fellow the creature took a hole in its skull before being able to utter a sound. Burdened with two gargoyles plus a human the grav pack whined in protest. Rods started to fall in earnest.

There were four lizard guards around the round entrance to the hive, which was a hole in the top of the mound. These were mostly looking out in different directions but two were together, apparently in conversation. As the spaceman watched one of the other proto-Zard sentries glanced at the two in conversation, and then went back to its own chore of staring out into the dark landscape. Rods wondered what the guards could be talking about considering that they had spent all day together in the hive and had some link to the queen’s communal mind. Soon it wouldn’t matter. Holding a dead gargoyle under one arm, with his legs wrapped around another he had one hand spare for the joy stick. He used what little capacity the grav pack had left to influence his fall to drift to just above the chatter-box guards when he let the gargoyles fall.

The chatting guards yelped and staggered, making the other two turn around. But it still took a few moments of staring at the dead flyers before any of the sentries thought to look up. Released from its extra burdens the grav pack braked Rods fall. He was able to turn, out of sight in the darkness, touch down lightly and lie flat, stripping off his gloves. The four guards couldn’t see anything above them or around them. This was not how an attack from any of the other colonies along the valley was supposed to occur. Where were the attackers? Rods thought he had moments before they called the alarm. He crept forward

“Are you alright?” whispered Suzanne.

“Shhh!“

Now he would see if his hours with the pistol, and considerable cost in ammunition, had paid off, not to mention the pistol’s laser sights to mark targets and his light amplification goggles. He put the red dots on the skulls of the two closest guards, the chatterers, as they looked down at the gargoyle bodies. Already bent forward they collapsed on top of the two gargoyles. One of the other two guards, who had still not seen Rods, hurried forward to see why his companions had collapsed. The other, with greater presence of mind, opened its snout to let out a yell and got out a yip before passing into proto-Zard Valhalla. The now sole survivor turned his head to see his companion collapse. That was enough for an alarm, but before it could give the warning cry the creature was hit in the shoulder – firing on the run, Rods had missed – which spun it around. It got out a single yell before also being hit again in the head, falling to its knees to teeter on the lip of the entrance. Rods raced forward. Nothing would announce his arrival like having a body fall through the entrance to land with a messy thud below.

 

Deep within the hive Ja-lar broke her meditation. Something had happened in her hive, she thought, irritated. Those who disturbed her meditation with un-hive like activity would pay dearly. She listened, felt for unusual vibrations and reached out with her