Genellan 04 Earth Siege Read online

  Dedication

  To Jerry and Lenore McCollom

  Acknowledgements

  My editor, Dan Perkins, for all his wonderful advice, worldly and otherwise.

  Jeremy Ellis for his artful interpretations of my universe.

  Section 01 Pitcairn System

  "Where there are goats, there are eaters of goats."

  Preface to History

  Under the sepia glow of a star long since gone dark, the mating instincts of the species became ritual. In that dim, forever distant past the ur-male foraged over grassy savannah, tasting the wind, always frightened. Short and thick of limb, these brutes sought protection in vast herds, for stalking them were huntresses, fierce creatures, lithe and quick.

  Wary of the male’s ability to wield stone and stick, the long-striding ur-female came to hunt in teams, peculiarly in teams of three. Yodeling like the furies of hell, the huntresses worried the herds, winnowing out the aged and the lame. Once clear of their protective masses the hapless creatures were run down by fecund females and clasped with powerful coupling organs. The tortured victims, never slain outright, were ripped apart, their loins implanted with the female's eggsack, her kar. The huntress, trembling in the rapture of procreation, screamed with terrible ecstasy, serving notice of renewed life.

  The act complete, the depleted female staggered away without backward glance, leaving the sundered male in the throes of death, his seed and mortal-blood flowing across the steaming kar. Corrupt with new life, the eggsack in time split, loosing a horde of maggots within the paternal host. Subsisting on the putrefying flesh of their sire, the surviving larvae were almost always male. Infrequently one egg among the multitude became female; on those rare occasions only one maggot would mature to term. Only she.

  Impeded by lust so destructive and by selection so perverse, Ulaggi evolution was glacial, the genetic instinct to kill well founded. Yet the tide of time and the mutability of life can never be checked. Inevitably civilization arrived. Benign methods to extract seed were discovered, and ravenous kar maggots were sustained without males perishing upon reproduction’s altar. Predatory breeding became proscribed, made taboo in culture and religion. Ulaggi males, though incorrigibly brutish, formed a workforce. Time passed; evolution accelerated. Millennia upon millennia flowed inexorably into history. Civilization blossomed, and the female elite, exploiting their burgeoning knowledge, delved ever deeper into science and politics, relentlessly tightening its grip on power.

  All the while the Ulaggi womb planet grew old.

  Planet Pitcairn Two

  The sandblasted atmosphere grew brighter as they climbed, swirling from murky rust to brooding gold. Lieutenant Commander Nestor Godonov was relieved that the frenzied pall obscured their height; his every fiber was devoted to securing his footing on the perilously steep mountain. Pulse pounding, Godonov halted to check his visor display. A flashing diode warned of low power; the patrol had been submerged in sandstorms for too long. Employing his retinal cursor, Godonov brought up a terrain display. Contour lines indicated a crowning ridge three hundred meters higher.

  A muffled shout came from above. The science officer glanced up. Major James Buck’s gear-encumbered silhouette burned a black hole in the sun-fired haze. The Tellurian Legion Marine had removed his mask and was bellowing through cupped gloves—in vain. Their sophisticated systems were worthless. Godonov touched the side of his helmet and signaled thumbs down. Pumping his forearm, Buck signaled to increase pace. Godonov nodded and peered back into the buffeting gloom. Sand rasped against his visor with the sound of distant surf, the battering gale more like ocean waves than arid wind.

  Chastain’s bulk emerged wraith-like from the maelstrom, his reactive armor blending with the sand. In front of the wide-shouldered Marine and less than half the giant’s size hiked a sandaled woman wearing sweat-stained hides. Her head was wrapped in a rag revealing naught but black eyes; these were cast down when she noticed Godonov observing her. The rail-thin female was agile yet her movements were hesitant; she was frightened, uncertain whether she had been rescued or kidnapped. She had been snatched from an Ulaggi mining compound—a labor camp; but she had also been taken from the only home she had ever known, and from her daughters. Her name was Pake, and she was a second-generation prisoner-of-war, born thirty years earlier to an enslaved survivor of the Shaula massacre. Until that morning, Pake had never seen a human male.

  “She’s strong, Commander,” Chastain boomed, the big man’s voice defeated the gale. Sergeant Major Jacques Chastain, a living legend and a demigod to the cliff dwellers, was one of Sharl Buccari’s Survivors.

  “Thanks, Jocko. I saw you carrying her,” Godonov said, teeth crunching grit. “We’re almost on top. The major wants some hustle.”

  The giant nodded and surged upward, nudging the female forward. Sergeant Wu and Corporal Zhou, wheezing behind their masks, came next, scrambling upward through the blowing crud. Godonov climbed after them, wondering what had happened to the cliff dwellers. Fifty meters higher the dust-swirled ether brightened, and suddenly, as if surfacing from an ocean, the sandstorm was below them. Major Buck, breather mask dangling, stood at the cloud’s lapping verge, counting noses.

  “About time we cleared the crap,” Zhou muttered over low-power laserlink, his battle armor shedding wisps of dust. “I’ve eaten dirt—”

  “Stow it!” Buck roared into the howling wind. “Voice and hand signals until I clear you otherwise. You know the damn drill. What chatter you getting, Corporal?”

  “Sorry, Major,” Zhou shouted back. “Normal stuff. Bugs are quiet.”

  They were still undetected. Standing at last under a naked sun, Godonov looked back at the ocean of gold and dun, ebbing and flowing against a granite massif. Held at bay by a shearing wind, the Aeolian tide surged with nervous agitation, as if angry the humans had escaped.

  The science officer pulled off his breathing mask and spit grit. Scratching his grizzled chin, he sucked nutrient from his fluids tube and squinted into a cloudless sky. He badly needed to shave. They had departed orbit with the sleekly glabrous bodies of Legion spacers; after twelve days on the planet, body hair had become an irritating fact of life. Two quartering moons adorned the planet’s dome of intense blue, but Godonov barely noticed; overhead, at differing altitudes, four predatory shapes suspended on leathery wings hovered against buffeting breezes. Although a relief to have sentries, unlimited visibility worked both ways; the hunters could see, but they could also be seen.

  “Helluva view,” Buck shouted, raising his visor and revealing sharp features haggard with fatigue. “Where’re the bugs, Nes? Why aren’t they after us?”

  “They don’t know we’re here, Jimbo,” Godonov shouted back. “Sandstorm covered our tracks.”

  “They gotta’ know she’s missing,” Buck replied, yanking his assault rifle from its fitting. He blew out the gas ports and banged the heavy weapon against his palm.

  “They probably don’t care,” Godonov said. “Plan’s working.”

  “Plan, my sweet butt,” Buck grumbled, raising his fist. “Close up and push it,” he shouted, turning into the gale. “Weapons ready.”

  Their hands no longer required for climbing, the Marines unrigged rifles. Chastain unlimbered a ponderous laser blaster. Satisfied, Buck stepped out, leading the patrol across bare rock. Their color-shifting garb blended against the unrelieved surface, but shadows moving over bleached stone could not be camouflaged; they needed cover. The humans hustled upward as the mountain’s shoulder rounded before them, giving purchase to meager groves of wind-warped cactus. Breasting the ridge, another mountain range hove into view, snowcapped and taller. A rift valley stretched northward between the ranges, its forest canopy
broken with a necklace of island-studded lakes.

  The patrol pushed through increasing thickets of leatherleafed scrub, following a rivulet, its stony banks gaudy with wildflowers. Lower, they encountered stunted junipers. Still lower, as the wind-sculpted trees grew taller, their captive balked at Chastain’s efforts to prod her onward.

  “What wrong?” Godonov asked, struggling with his feeble Neo-Mandarin. The female’s scarf-muffled, singsong spilled out too fast. Godonov activated his communications unit, its depleted solar cells finally recharged.

  “—dangerous,” the translation came through his helmet receiver, an emotionless alto, “—evil things. We will die here.”

  Sergeant Wu, catching up, gave a low whistle. “Damn, Commander,” he said. “She’s says it’s nasty up here.”

  “What things?” Godonov asked as a swift-moving object blotted out the sun. The female shrieked and collapsed behind Chastain, clenching the Marine’s massive thigh. Tonto and Bottlenose swooped by, wind hissing across two-meter wingspans. The hunters twisted into the wind, luffing and stowing membranes as they neatly touched. The mattock-headed creatures wore goggles and conformal skullcaps; knife scabbards and lightweight automatics hung from small-arms bandoleers over carbon armor. They stalked forward on stubby talons, blinking rapidly and tasting the air; their gaping maws revealed rows of sharp teeth. Godonov flashed hand sign commanding the cliff dwellers to stand back. The gruesome duo halted, chittering to each other in registers at the limits of human hearing, apparently amused.

  “What things?” Godonov repeated. “Humans? Ulaggi? What things?”

  The female emerged from behind Chastain’s thigh. She loosened her face-rag, revealing eminent cheekbones covered with taut flesh. She eyed the hunters, her features dark. Her fear of the cliff dwellers had lessened, but not her loathing. Pushing a lank fall of hair from her face she turned to Godonov, her begging tone near panic, belying the passionless translation.

  “Not go into the wood. Not go. Not go. There are evil things. Creatures of the night. Beasts that scream.”

  “We will protect you,” Godonov replied, scanning the skies. Notch descended toward the rendezvous. Pop-eye held station overhead.

  “Friggin’ all we need!” Corporal Zhou whined as he joined them. “Got bugs behind us and night-screaming monsters in front of us.”

  “Shaddup!” Buck snapped, falling back on his bunched squad. “Keep moving! Or you’ll get a boot up your butt. Zhou, take the point. You get to flush any screamers. Sergeant Wu, you’re number two, in case Zhou loads his skivvies next time a birdie chirps. Move it!”

  The Marines jumped. Tonto flashed hand sign indicating the hunters would scout the flanks. Buck acknowledged with a curt nod and gestured with a jerk of his thumb for Chastain to get the female moving.

  “Come on, ma’am,” Chastain said softly, putting an arm around the female. Stumbling, she spat on her fingers and rubbed her forehead, her expression melting to tears. The big Marine embraced the small woman, lifting her into motion. Pake responded with a wan smile and staggered forward, eyes wide. As she passed a wind-twisted tree her fingers lingered, trembling on its gnarled trunk.

  “She’s scared out of her gourd,” Buck said, head swiveling, eyes darting. “Why is that, Nes?”

  “Psychological barbwire,” Godonov replied. “The Ulaggi probably fed them horror stories to keep them from wandering. They don’t want their slave labor to know how much nicer it is up here.”

  “Hope you’re right,” Buck muttered, glancing over his shoulder.

  The terrain flattened as they descended, the foliage grew taller, with wispy needles that moaned in the thrashing wind. In sheltered hollows the trees grew to greater proportions, never taller than five or six meters, but attaining immense girth and under whose fragrant boughs foraged squirrel-like rodents and chesty birds. The valley was alive. Pushing through another ring of thicket, the humans came to a boggy lea resplendent with flowers. Scattered across the meadow, placidly grazing, was a flock of shaggy animals. Big-horned males and triangle-faced females, many with young, lifted rusty-fleeced heads as the humans passed; a few bounded aside, more wary than frightened.

  “More goats,” Godonov said, thinking it strange that feral beasts would be so tame. They had seen other ovine herds, smaller white creatures on the higher elevations.

  “Now that’s scary,” Buck muttered sarcastically, watching Pake gape at the animals, unbelieving. Chastain swept her into motion.

  “At least we’ll have plenty of meat,” Godonov said.

  “We’ll need it,” Buck replied, grumbling obscenities.

  Godonov could not blame the Marine; their prospects were dim. Even if Admiral Runacres immediately turned the fleet around, it would take four months to complete the hyperlight cycle, and Runacres had not abandoned them on Pitcairn Two just to make a quick round trip. Something ominous was afoot, likely a fleet engagement. Godonov swallowed hard. In a space battle anything could happen, mostly bad things.

  A screech came from above, a shrill call at the limits of human perception. Suddenly, soundlessly, Tonto was at Godonov’s side. Tonto was the reason they would be rescued. Over a decade earlier, Sharl Buccari’s fateful meeting with the young cliff dweller had marked humanity’s first friendly encounter with an alien life form. The Genellan cliff dweller had saved Buccari’s life and the lives of her ship-wrecked crew; Sharl Buccari would move mountains and drain oceans before she would abandon the hunter. And Godonov, like most humans, had a religious faith in Sharl Buccari’s determination.

  The hunter signed, “Sentries within bowshot.”

  “Almost home,” Buck muttered. The Marine signed to Tonto: “Deploy to flanks. Watch our backs.”

  The chirruping cliff dweller hop-waddled with astounding velocity into the brush. Bottlenose’s answering call came from the opposite flank.

  “Like I said, Jimbo, the plan’s working,” Godonov said.

  “Yeah, right,” Buck replied, but this time with a crooked smile. “Okay, Nes, I’ll admit it—now that we’re back on top. It was a good idea. Lucky, but good.”

  “Lucky, my sweet rump,” Godonov replied, striding in the Marine’s footsteps.

  “About like finding a cold bottle of beer in my boot when we get back to camp,” Buck laughed.

  “Grunts don’t know brains from beans. Now we have intelligence to process. I’ll explain that to you in one-syllable words when we get back to camp. Move out, Major.”

  “Don’t press it, shippie,” Buck laughed, breaking into a trot.

  Godonov also laughed but in relief; there was little humor in their situation. Human prisoners held on Pitcairn Two had been discovered during Admiral Runacres’s initial foray into the Red Zone. Runacres had been routed; but as the human fleet retreated into hyperlight, they had intercepted a signal, a few plaintive words of Neo-Mandarin. That the prisoners spoke Chinese was not surprising; a half century earlier, at Shaula System, in humanity’s first contact with sentient beings, the Akita Fleet of the Asian Cooperation had been annihilated. No survivors emerged from the devastated hulks, but a suspicious number of bodies were never recovered.

  Godonov checked his HUD, reset the terrain bug, and stepped out. As they approached a tumbling confluence of streams a hunter screeched. Startled, Godonov looked up to see Notch perched on a snag. The cliff dweller, black eyes narrowed, shifted the bloodied carcass of a small animal to one of his talons and employed his bony, four-fingered hand in polite greeting. Godonov displayed both palms.

  Admiral Runacres had returned to the Red Zone to rescue the mysterious prisoners. Twelve days earlier, Godonov’s reconnaissance team had been inserted onto Pitcairn Two’s highlands. The mission had gone quickly awry. No sooner had Godonov’s advance team been committed to the planet than did fleet sensors detect an Ulaggi battle fleet in transit to the konish system—to Genellan. Admiral Runacres, with no recourse but to pursue, had ordered an emergency recall, marooning Godonov’s team.

 
“Are we glad to see you, Major,” a hushed voiced announced. Two face-painted Marines garbed in matte-black skullcaps and raiding gear materialized from the brush. Godonov recognized Technician Private First Class Slovak, the only female on the recon team, and burly Laser Corporal O’Hara. They moved nervously, brandishing their weapons. Up ahead, another skull-capped Marine escorted Chastain and Pake away at quick march.

  “It’s mutual, Corporal,” Buck replied. “Where’s Gunny Turley?”

  “We lost him, Major!” O’Hara blurted.

  “You what!” Buck growled, rounding on the Marine.

  “He just...disappeared, Major,” O’Hara cried. “Three nights ago. We frigging ain’t alone up here, Major. We got—”

  “Stow the bullshit, Corporal!” Buck snapped. “Give me facts.”

  “Aye, sir!” O’Hara said, trying to skulk through the woods and maintain a posture of rigid attention at the same time.

  “Gunny Turley moved base camp to a dry cave about a kilometer north,” Slovak jumped in. “Good cover, high ground, close to water.”

  “It looked perfect, Major,” O’Hara said. “Dry shelter. Observable approaches. We posted perimeter guard, four on, four off. Gunny wasn’t even on duty. He went down to the beach just after midwatch to take a leak. Never came back. We searched all night and the next day. Couldn’t find any sign of him.”

  “We think there’s some kind of predatory life form, Major,” Slovak added. “We think—”

  “Let Commander Godonov do the thinking,” Buck exhaled, turning to the science officer.

  “Did you deploy sensors?” Godonov demanded. “What did they show? What data did you get?”

  “Yes, sir, we deployed full-spectrum and motion. Got nothing, Commander. Nothing,” O’Hara replied, glancing at Slovak. Slovak looked at her boots. Both Marines were exhausted; even camo-paint could not hide their bruised and sunken eyes, and something else.

  “What is it?” Buck demanded.