Normally, underground construction
was smart. Zig urban spaces, like Ti’s
home city, often had as many sublevels as upper stories. Building outward wasn’t an option. Building upward required more additional
resources. Excavation created instant
space plus a small output of materials. Most
Zig didn’t mind tight quarters or artificial lighting, anyway.
Such extensive undermining was less
necessary for a small settlement on an empty world. Metals were abundant, limited only by speed
of extraction. There were no limits on
construction size. Building underground was
especially strange for a Terran settlement.
Humans, as KoShunTi understood them, preferred more open and well-lit habitation. They should have spread outward, not
downward.
It was almost as if they were
avoiding horizontal expansion, keeping the footprint of their settlement
small. Were they hiding its actual
size? She vaguely remembered some arrangement
here between the Terrans and Mauraug. Something like a competition to develop the
planet? Maybe the Humans had been
playing a gambit with their construction choices.
It did appear that they had shored
and supported their underground adequately.
They just hadn’t reinforced it enough to withstand aerial
bombardment. No surprise there; why
would they expect such an attack? Why
would anyone expect such a brutal, horrible, irrational act? The
Collective hadn’t. Or more precisely,
the Collective hadn’t given much credence to the suggestion that such an attack
was possible.
KoShunTi was hardly privy to the
internal debates of the Collective. She
knew only what media reports summarized, plus what she could deduce from her
own knowledge, reports from other starfarers, and the evidence of Collective
activities at her various ports of call.
All that data, taken together, told her that Locust IV had been a low priority for
Collective military protection.
Therefore, the probability of threat had been estimated low.
Why else were the first responders to the crisis here the few vessels that happened to be in the right system: a salvager, a miner, a freight hauler, and a passenger liner? The lingering distress calls from the two
dying settlements were passed along to Terra and the Dominion, but only requests for assistance came back. Any willing ship was asked to respond on their behalf. It would be days yet before any official
presence arrived in the Locust system.
It was like the governments’ faces were turned away from this planet.
Ti's employer, captain Carlos Medrano, Human, had opined that the two cultural governments discouraged Collective
attention to the Locust colony. Its joint development had been negotiated against either Human or Mauraug wishes. No doubt, each culture wanted a freer hand to
abuse the terms of that negotiation, without Collective oversight. If Carlos was right, that policy had cost
them both and cost them dearly.
There might not be any survivors of
this massacre. There certainly were no
‘settlements’ remaining on Locust IV.
New Gethsemane was a landfill of smashed concrete, shattered glass,
splintered ceramics, and shredded metal.
The word on comms said Gorash’Bond looked much the same. The Mauraug settlement had been more widespread
and less dug in, but had also been bombarded more thoroughly.
No surprise there. If rumor was right, the hostiles responsible
for this atrocity were Mauraug separatists… wait, no, religious
schismatics. It amounted to the same
thing, really. KoShunTi genuinely
struggled to comprehend how disagreements in belief could turn into mass
murder.
She wasn’t being particularly noble
or naïve. Zig culture had all sorts of
schisms – religious, political, technical – some of them with deep roots and
bitter fruit. Yes, the occasional death resulted when tempers flared or a particularly intransigent partisan
impeded the proper progress of ideas.
However, Zig ‘heretics’ rarely needed to fear reprisal for their
ideas. A principled opposition was considered
healthy, a sign that the current standard was robust enough to withstand
challenges. Sometimes, the
revolutionaries were even granted the chance to test their ideas. At the worst, they reaped the painful but
self-chosen consequences of their errors.
At best, their faith, their policy, or their theories proved a viable
alternative… rarely, even better than the norm
Suppressing and punishing dissent
was the sign of a flawed culture. The
Mauraug would eventually learn and adapt, or they would continue to fall behind
the rest of the Collective, possibly all the way to extinction. In the meantime, other sapients would suffer
from the shrapnel of their cultural explosions.
In this case, approximately 850
Humans had been killed, along with an estimated 815 Mauraug. Those numbers were tentative, based on data
provided by the Collective, as relayed by the individual cultural governments,
supposedly based on census reports from the colonial administrations. Any part of that chain might have introduced
bias or error.
The estimated death toll also
assumed that all recorded colonists were dead.
There might have been survivors… assuming they were well away from the
settlements. So far, KoShunTi and her
comrades had found no signs of life within the ruins. They had found plenty of corpses, but no live
Humans. No signals, distress or
otherwise, were detected from this region.
No anomalous heat or chemical signatures indicated the presence of an
uncommunicative living creature, whether trapped, wounded, or just hiding.
That survey only accounted for this
region, over the last dozen hours since their landing. Saving
Grace had volunteered to sift through the remains of New Gethsemane. They had to deal with more… biological…
salvage, but also had first shot at recovery on any materials or
technology left within the settlement. A passenger ship, the Great
Family liner Vlluti, was scanning the
continent sector by sector, searching for any outlying habitations or scattered
inhabitants. The Zig miner VasKoTaCho was working in tandem with
the Mauraug freighter Shomuth at
Gorash’Bond, digging up the corpses and possessions of the Mauraug colonists.
Another group of private craft were
waiting in the wings, but first arrivals had first rights of salvage. They also had the responsibility of seeking
and tending to survivors. It was
starting to look like those duties might be minimal or even null.
“’Ti, look east-southeast, about a
klick off,” instructed a voice from the mini-comm clipped at her belt. That would be the captain, comfortably aboard
‘Grace, watching the cameras and
directing his crew as they did the actual dirty work.
KoShunTi turned around and looked
as bid. There, hiking steadily toward
her – or rather, the ship beside her – were an unfamiliar Human and three
Mauraug. Wait, no, two Humans; one more brought up the rear of their train. She couldn’t make out all
the details at this range, but the size, coloration, and gait of the organisms
told her their general species.
“I see them, captain,” she signaled
back, “Should I go to greet them?”
“No. Let them come to us. Stay under cover of the ship. Until we know who these people are, we can’t
assume they’re friendly.” Carlos sounded
uncertain. That made two of them, but
unlike her, the captain was supposed to at least pretend confidence.
They had no information about what,
exactly, had happened here. The
destruction could have been triggered by inside agencies. The Mauraug Apostates could have had agents
on the ground, who would be most likely to know when to leave and where to go
to survive an aerial attack. These might
be crew from an Apostate ship, left behind to cause further mischief.
Whoever they were, colonists or
terrorists, they would be taken into ‘protective custody’ and sent aloft. Let the Collective investigators sort it
out. Hopefully, the stragglers would leave
quietly. Hopefully, they were surviving
colonists. Hopefully, they would be
grateful for rescue. Even if they were
victims and not criminals, that didn’t guarantee that this meeting would be
peaceful.
KoShunTi could see a lot of reasons
why survivors of a terrorist slaughter might retain some anger. Some of that aggression might be directed not
only at their attackers, but also at their belated rescuers.
******************************************************************************************
Mikala Turell’s anger was currently
directed toward someone absent but nearby: Evgeny,
if you’re not already dead, I may
kill you. Her temper was worsening
by the minute, heightened by the midday heat, the stench of Mauraug fur, and
the pain in her hindquarters. All three
discomforts were steadily increasing.
She was seated behind the
leather-skirted Mauraug, Voshtig bash-something, holding tight to the passenger
straps of Wallace Harmon’s runner cart as it raced across the rough
terrain. Her positioning was starting to make her arms sore, but it was either that or cling tightly to the
driver itself. She preferred a workout
to a face-full of itchy, sweaty, stinking back hair. Why couldn’t it at least wear a shirt, if not a body suit like Karech
bash-whatever?
She wasn’t entirely sure what was
happening, but she knew Evgeny Lerner was to blame. The scouting group was traveling north at maximum
speed. The Mauraug leader, Soloth bash’Soloth
- she could remember that name easily enough – had received a call earlier in
the day. Mikala's command of the Mauraug
language was limited, but she had caught Evgeny’s name and the words for star ship and going to. Soloth responded to the message
with sudden anger and ordered Voshtig to mount up with Mikala behind. Karech had climbed behind Soloth on the other
cart. The two drivers then aimed for New
Gethsemane.
Before that call, they had been loading
the carts with supplies from the Terran cache site. Finding the cache had taken most of the
previous day, and Soloth had elected to sleep in the hut… leaving its three
subordinates to bunk down outside.
Mikala had come out ahead the next morning, since she was the only one
of them accustomed to sleeping on the ground.
She could only imagine what kinds of cramps Voshtig and Karech must have
woken with. Good. Maybe they were suffering still, quietly.
Soloth had received another
unexpected call earlier the previous day, while they searched. It took that message more privately and had
shown little outward reaction to whatever news it received. Mikala had to assume it came from the
outpost, most likely from the fat Mauraug Soloth had left in charge. Still, for the other group of survivors to
risk contact at all, there must have been some serious need.
Putting both events together, plus
the current reaction, Mikala suspected the situation on Locust IV had
changed. What Evgeny had to do with the
crisis was unclear, but he really shouldn’t be mentioned if the call concerned
solely Mauraug matters. Had he perhaps
called the Apostates and gotten caught?
That possibility would suggest that life with the Dominionist Mauraug
had become so unbearable that it was worth risking death to escape. No, in
that case, Soloth would not be moving toward one of the Apostate landing
sites.
Had the dumb-ass Defenseman managed to
hail some non-Apostate ship? Maybe he,
or both he and Wallace, had slipped out of the outpost, hoping to join up with
a rescuer… or just to flee into New Gethsemane.
Neither possibility was very likely if the Apostates were still
on-planet. Evgeny would have the sense to
stay quiet and hidden until the marauders were gone.
Wallace had looked pretty beaten up
when Mikala left. Was he in any shape to
run? It was possible his injuries were
less severe than they seemed. He could
be more clever than he seemed, faking lameness in order to throw off the
Mauraug from his real capability. Tricks
like that were included in Mikala’s training, not usually in Defense’s curriculum. Still, the little Mauraug, Luuboh, was
supposed to be a capable medic. A feigned
injury might or might not have passed its scrutiny.
She would know the situation soon enough. From the cache
site to New Gethsemane’s south border was a fast ride by runner cart. She just hoped that they would arrive before the
heat, the smell, and the motion made her vomit up her morning rations.
*************************************************************************************
Evgeny was getting more and more
upset, himself. As he closed steadily
upon the salvage ship, he could finally see a portion of New Gethsemane beyond
its bulk. Only a small portion was
visible, but that portion was representative enough. The tower of the southern guard station was
gone. The various dormitories that
should mark the skyline from this approach… gone. None of the taller structures further north
remained, either.
What he did see was a lone figure
standing beside the ship, watching him approach. He could also see what that sapient had been
waiting on: a heavy crawler cart driving up from the northwest. These were definitely salvagers, then. The cart was similar to transports used to
move building materials around, but wasn’t configured like the vehicles the
colonists used. It looked cleaner,
newer, less worn, and definitely more the product of a fully automated factory
versus a hand-assembly job.
Where was everyone else? Any local survivors? An excavation crew? Medical staff attending to the wounded, or at
least identifying the dead? The official
investigators to look over the scene?
There was no one else. Just a ship, a cart driver, and a lone… Zig,
most likely… crawling over the corpse of his home, picking at it like carrion
eaters.
Evgeny covered the last
quarter-klick briskly, fueled by fury, sparked by anxiety. He could hear the Mauraug behind him doing
their best to catch up. Between his long
stride, his training, and his impetus, Evgeny kept his lead all the way across the
remaining stretch of dry dirt and scattered stone.
The Zig, Copper Caste and somewhat
androgynous to Human eyes, held up a hand as Evgeny reached a point about thirty meters away.
Its other hand was empty as well, but
kept near a holster at its belt. Some
sort of small hand weapon hung there, ready for quick use.
It spoke using the Collective trade
language variant preferred by Terrans.
Its voice did not help to reveal its gender. “That is close enough. Please put down any weapons and identify
yourselves. We are here to help. This is the salvage ship Saving Grace.” The ship’s
name was given in clear Terran English.
Evgeny ignored the first part of
the instructions, but answered, “I am Evgeny Lerner, a resident of New
Gethsemane. Former resident, and Defense
representative. I am returning to search
for my parents. Stand aside. I will decide when and where your help is
needed.”
Gaalet was close enough to hear by
that time but had not yet recovered enough breath to speak. It made an irritated noise after hearing
Evgeny’s response.
“And who are these Mauraug?” the
Zig demanded, “Again, put down your weapons and identify yourselves. I cannot guarantee your safety unless I can
verify that you are not threats.”
Weapons? Evgeny thought. True, he had the sonic stunner in his hand,
but held non-threateningly downward.
Gaalet or Suufit, one or both, probably had their handguns drawn. He didn’t feel safe turning around to
look. He hoped they weren’t pointing
them at this Zig. Or maybe he preferred
that they were.
“We are not threats. We are not making threats,” Evgeny replied,
trying to keep his voice level despite his growing frustration. The crawler was getting increasingly
close. Evgeny could see that its bed was
loaded, a tarpaulin stretched over some cargo that shifted irregularly as the
vehicle rolled over bumps in its path.
What did it carry? Wreckage being moved from pile to pile? Equipment or resources missed by the Apostates
in their looting? Ores and metals and
other resources from the mines further west?
Or was its cargo something organic, something no less valuable for sale,
if one were sufficiently cynical?
“What are you collecting?” Evgeny
shouted for the hearing of the Zig, the crawler driver, and those coming up
behind him. “What are you doing in my home? Identify yourself… you’re the intruder here, not
me.” As he spoke, he raised his arm to
point at the vehicle. The sonic stunner swung in the same direction as his hand.
The Zig reacted to his tone and his
movement, reaching down for the weapon at its belt. It had the little gun raised halfway before
Evgeny swung around and triggered his own weapon. A painfully loud peal of accelerated air
burst from the base of the stunner’s cone, sweeping aside loose dirt and stones
as it hurtled toward the Zig. At least,
a viewer might assume that the wave occurred first, and the impact that threw the
Zig’s body backwards happened second. To
a biological eye, the two events were nearly simultaneous.
What also appeared at the
same time was a spray of glittering brown circulatory fluid erupting from
the victim’s lower abdomen. Evgeny was
momentarily confused. A sonic stunner
shouldn’t cause major injury like that, not even at the maximum setting and
closest range. He was meters away and using the standard biological setting.
It looked like the Zig
had been… shot. His memory finally sorted out
an anomaly in the stunner's bark, a quieter sound that had accompanied it
but originated from Evgeny’s rear and right.
Now he did spin around. Both Gaalet and Suufit had their weapons in
hand, but Gaalet’s plasma thrower was held low.
Besides that, it would have incinerated its target, not punctured
it. Suufit was the one lowering its gun,
a one-handed magnetic flechette launcher.
Evgeny was surprised. He hadn’t expected either of the Mauraug to
come to his aid, much less the resentful Suufit. He didn’t take time to consider the matter
further. The Zig was down and no longer
an obstacle. He hoped it – he or she? –
wasn’t badly hurt, but couldn’t spare much sympathy either. It hadn’t spared any for the survivors.
Evgeny scrambled to intercept the
crawler cart. He could see its driver, a
dark-skinned male Human, through its clear plastic window panels. He raised the sonic stunner and called out, “Stop! What are you hauling?”
The man had definitely seen him and
heard his question. He also was ignoring
Evgeny’s command. He accelerated,
turning the cart to the far side, angling it toward the waiting ramp of the
salvage ship. He wasn’t going to help
his downed shipmate? The ‘rescuers’ of
Locust IV were apparently not the highest quality of sapients.
Evgeny decided to test what weight
his commands held with his own side. “Gaalet,
stop that crawler!” he called back over his shoulder. “Take out its treads.”
A screaming energy discharge and a
wave of heat were the compliant answer from behind. A sphere of superheated matter streaked
toward the crawler, catching the edge of its tread belt. Most of the shot struck the ground, creating
an explosion of gasified matter and leaving a glowing red welt. Gaalet had aimed low to avoid damaging the
vehicle, its cargo, and possibly its driver.
Unfortunately, the blast hadn’t damaged
the tread sufficiently, either. The
crawler limped onward, more slowly but still closing the gap between it and the
ship. Now it was entirely past
Evgeny. Suufit fired twice as well, but
its projectiles rang uselessly off the body of the crawler.
Evgeny decided to pursue the
vehicle himself. He spat out, “Cease
fire,” hoping that the two shooters would comply rather than take advantage of
his position between them and the crawler.
Then, he ran at his best available sprint toward the crawler’s cab.
He passed the prone Zig on the way. A voice, also male and Human, crackled from a
handheld comm unit on the wounded sapient’s belt. It struggled weakly to reach the device. A growing rust stain covered its thin work
shirt just beneath its ribs. Evgeny
turned away again in pursuit of his higher priority. Let Luuboh stop to see to the wounded. He was going to find out what these
scavengers knew and what they were doing.
The crawler was almost aboard by
the time Evgeny caught up to it. No
plasma or other projectiles hit it – or him – as he ran. He went to the passenger side of the
vehicle’s cab and tried to flag down the driver. When that didn’t work, he brandished the
sonic stunner. The driver’s expression
was set, focused and grim, almost as if to deny the existence of any
threat. No doubt he saw his only safety
inside the ship and only harm in acknowledging Evgeny’s
demands.
The driver continued to maneuver
the crawler straight ahead and hit the ship’s ground ramp at the best speed the
damaged vehicle could muster. It groaned
and shook, and the cargo in its bed shifted again. Several items slid backward, toward the rear. Part of one object extended out past the tarpaulin:
a booted leg. As the crawler jostled
upon hitting the ramp’s center joint, the leg moved and bent in a macabre
dance.
Evgeny could only gape for a moment
as the vehicle drove past with its grisly cargo. Then he raised the stunner and fired,
uselessly. He fired again, holding the
trigger down, trying to rip apart the crawler, its contents, and its driver
with the surrogate screams of the sonic emitter. It vibrated and chirped, trying to warn him
that such use was not recommended and would cause damage to both weapon and
user. The noise was painful, but only
faded into background behind the pain of Evgeny’s loss.
Unfortunately, the emissions also
left him deafened. The calls of
the Mauraug could not reach him. Gaalet,
having heard back from Soloth, could not advise Evgeny to stand down on their
superior’s orders. It could not
warn him that their leader would be arriving shortly to take command of the
situation. Gaalet and Suufit could only
follow, trying to get close enough to insert themselves bodily.
Luuboh did, indeed, stop to tend to
the fallen Zig, whom it more capably identified as female. The blood loss was severe. Wallace, too, needed attention. The Human had tried to keep up with the pace
of events and eventually collapsed to one knee, gasping for breath, far behind. Yet even if Luuboh or Wallace
had been able to call out, Evgeny would not have heard them.
Evgeny also could not hear the
words of the crawler driver, as he shouted for help, nor could he hear
captain Carlos Medrano’s response via the in-vehicle comm. The ship’s captain tried to use general
speakers within the ship's cargo bay to hail the intruder, to no effect.
“Drop your weapons and surrender or
you will be fired upon,” Carlos warned.
This was more of a threat to the Mauraug outside, where the ship’s
external weapons could target. They decided
to comply, lacking Evgeny’s motivations, madness, or deafness.
“Intruder, leave my ship now or I’ll
have you before a Collective court on charges of trespass and assault,” Captain Medrano thundered in his best outraged growl. The ultimatum would have been ineffective
even if Evgeny could hear it. “Suit yourself. Mitchell, clear that deck. I’m closing the ramp.” The captain’s remarks were directed to both
Evgeny and the crawler’s driver.
The driver, Mitchell, leapt out of
the vehicle’s cab and ran for the nearest entry hatch. Evgeny tracked him and fired, sending the man
sprawling to the textured decking. This
time, the weapon performed its job normally, only rendering its victim concussed
and confused.
Though he couldn’t hear the motors
starting, Evgeny could feel their vibrations through the cargo deck as the
external ramp began to lift. He looked
back and saw the rectangle of outside light beginning to shrink from its
bottom.
They’re
trapping me inside? he thought, Fine. I’ll see what I can find from here. Worst case, they catch and arrest me… or I
join my neighbors on that death cart.
Evgeny strode past the twitching driver and went to the hatch the man had been heading toward, himself. When he reached it, he found the door sealed
and locked tight. Whoever was aboard
could evidently ‘see’ him, either through internal camera systems or other
sorts of sensors. That was fine. Evgeny didn’t want to get inside the ship
physically, at least not yet. He just
wanted whatever it knew.
If he couldn’t get to its contents
or crew, he could try to reach its mind.
Evgeny reached into his pocket and found the faceted sphere nestled
securely there. He looked around and
found the other components he needed: a spare compad, secured in a recharging
bracket on the wall, plus a network interface cable.
Insert
the memory bead… enter the ‘wake-up’ codes… boot Matilda… now splice compad
into the ship’s internal network…
Evgeny
typed, Can’t hear; using manual input only, to notify Matilda about his
disability.
She
printed back, Understood. What
happened?
He
responded less with an explanation than an order: You’re connected to a starship’s
internal systems. Get as much control as
you can. They’re enemies. I need to know whatever they know.
Her
reply was equally direct: Does the threat justify violation of Collective A.I.
protocols?
She meant: Are you, personally, in danger? As her User, Evgeny’s protection came above
any other concerns, even Terran law, much less Collective law. Collective A.I. law forbid insertion of an
artificial intelligence into any computer network larger than a single personal
computing unit without express permission, to meet a specific need that could
not be served otherwise. That meant that
A.I.s, legally, could not inhabit anything remotely the size and complexity of a
starship. The idea would give most
non-Terran sapients panic attacks. Even
most Terrans would hesitate at the thought.
Evgeny
did not. He typed, YES.
Matilda’s
last response was only: I have limited access from this entry point. I may be unavailable for several seconds
while working. Please stand by.
Then
she was gone and ‘silent’. Evgeny waited
to see what she would turn up. He waited
next to the truckload of corpses, which he could now smell in the enclosed
cargo deck. He watched the driver of
that vehicle struggle to pull himself together, staying at a wary distance from
the madman aboard his ship. Evgeny listened
to the increasing ringing in his ears as his hearing slowly and painfully
returned. Belatedly, he wondered what
the other survivors outside were doing.
He did
not worry about Matilda. Her core
programming was safe inside the memory bead.
She was armed with codes and routines provided only to the Brins of
Defense personnel, to aid them in their role as criminal investigators. The only question was how far she could
penetrate before the crew of Saving Grace
realized they were being infiltrated and cut off access to internal memory
stores.
As it
happened, nobody aboard was capable of stopping her, at all.
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