“At least you wouldn’t have to
worry about them eating you,” Marie said.
“I don’t give it a thought,” Klasson
said. “And I don’t want ‘em wiped out. It’s their planet. They got more right
to be here than we do.”
Izin leaned forward. “Can you eat
them?”
Klasson glanced back at Izin curiously,
unused to speaking with tamphs or to the sound of Izin’s synthesized vocalizer.
“Yeah, but by the time you cook ‘em enough to kill the local bugs, the meat’s
no good. It’s like eating boot leather. We prefer our Earth animals. Trouble
is, so do they!”
“They’re not affected by the
organisms in your animals?” I asked.
“Ain’t none.
Everythin
’
our grandparents
brung
went through full
decon
. Even them! They didn’t come here to poison this
planet.”
The petrified forest began to
show signs of broken trunks and branches. Soon the entire forest lay on its
side, felled millions of years ago by a devastating volcanic eruption triggered
by the Tree Killer’s passing gravity. Giant angular roots, torn from the ground,
rose up sharply out of the lava plain. The petrified
dinotrees
all lay aligned away from the source of the ancient blast, now marked by a
ragged cliff rising hundreds of meters into the air.
Klasson banked slowly as we
approached the caldera’s rocky rim wall, coming around to cruise just below the
crest as we looked for a landing spot.
“That’ll do,” Klasson said at
last as he rotated his ferry’s two wing engines to the vertical, slowing to
hover. He nosed over onto a narrow perch just large enough for the landing
struts, leaving the tail of his aircraft jutting out over the cliff.
“How do we get down the other
side?” I asked.
“You slide,” he said with a grin,
adding, “it’s not as sheer as this side.”
Klasson threw his shoulder
against the squeaking side door, forcing it open, then we filed out after him.
As soon as Izin was outside the aircraft, he moved as far from the cliff’s edge
as possible.
“What do you think of the view,
Izin?” I asked, delighting in his fear of heights.
Klasson looked appreciatively out
across the lava plain, over shattered stone trees to the vast petrified forest
in the distance. “You can see better from over here.”
“Here will do?” Izin replied with
his back to the cliff.
“You can’t see nothing there,”
Klasson said.
“I have acrophobia.”
“You what?”
Izin slung his long thin bag over
his shoulder, taking a firm hold of the nearest boulder. “I’m uncomfortable
with heights.”
“He’s terrified of them,” I added
helpfully.
“No kidding?” Klasson said. “But
you spend your life flying?”
“Travelling inside a starship is
not the same as hanging from a cliff,” Izin said. “My people prefer lowlands
and water, not cliff tops. We’re amphibians, not birds!”
“It’s not just him,” I said.
“It’s all of them, scared to death of heights!”
“And you would drown in a
bathtub,” Izin said before turning and starting towards the top of the cliff.
Marie and I exchanged amused
looks at my engineer’s embarrassment. His people were at least as smart as the
Tau Cetins and far more ruthless as warriors. It was why the major galactic
powers had blockaded the Intruder Civilization for more than two thousand years
and showed no sign of letting them out. Who would have thought with all their
fearsome reputation, they couldn’t admit to having a weakness?
“He hasn’t heard the last of
this,” I whispered mischievously.
“Don’t make him angry,” Marie
warned.
“What’d he mean about the bathtub?”
Klasson asked.
“Sirius can’t swim,” Marie
explained.
“Is that a fact?” Klasson said.
“I had no need to learn.” When
Marie gave me an amused look, I added defensively, “There’s no swimming in
space!”
“One’s afraid of heights and the
other can’t swim,” Klasson said uncertainly. “I sure hope you fellas can
fight!”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Marie
said, patting me on the cheek with mock sympathy before climbing after Izin.
At the cliff top, we crouched
behind a rocky parapet where we could observe the BBI base lying some distance
from the foot of the caldera wall. It comprised a cluster of sparkling white
prefab buildings containing research labs, maintenance and communications
facilities, a large energy plant and accommodation for several thousand
scientists, engineers and their families. Surrounding the base were sprawling
green fields and terrestrial forests where genetically enhanced Earth flora was
being tested prior to large scale transplantation to Deadwood. Machines worked
the fields, supervised by technicians and supported by an intricate irrigation
system distributing water from the deep lake in the center of the caldera.
Between the fields were greenhouses containing plants being tested for both
warmer and cooler latitudes and small enclosures where reengineered Earth
animals had their tolerance to Deadwood’s microbial life tested. East of the
base was a small, well equipped spaceport where the
Soberano
lay across the landing apron, almost too big to be
accommodated.
I glanced at Marie. “I guess they
do have the only picometric scanner in this part of Mapped Space.”
Klasson pointed to a lattice-like
needle rising high above the crater floor. “That communications tower between
the spaceport and the base has got sensors that’ll see you once you’re away
from the cliff face.”
I turned to Izin. “Can you take
care of that?”
He unsealed his long bag and
pulled out a military grade SN6 sniper rifle equipped with low power optics that
complemented his naturally telescoping eyes.
When Klasson saw the rifle, his
eyes bulged. Having been stuck on a backwater like Deadwood all his life, he’d
never even heard of a SN6, but one look told him it was a thoroughbred. “Nice
gun.”
“It pulls to the left,” Izin
said, lifting the rifle and sighting on the distant communications tower. For
several minutes, he patiently studied his target in minute detail, sighting
with his head tilted slightly away from the barrel so his large bulbous eye
could focus accurately. “The sensors are dependent on a power conduit running
up through the center of the tower,” he said eventually, sliding a twelve
centimeter long round into the breach.
“No way you can make that shot,”
Klasson said. “It’s twenty two kilometers! I’ve measured it.”
“Twenty two thousand, three
hundred and forty one meters exactly,” Izin corrected, reading the distance off
the rifle’s range finder. He took up his firing position, becoming as still as
a statue. Tamphs were ambush predators, evolved to hide and wait for their prey
to approach, then strike without warning. To camouflage themselves, they’d
evolved the ability for absolute physical stillness, making them perhaps the
most formidable snipers in the galaxy.
Izin seemed to take forever to fire.
When he did, the only sign was a slight whisper as the magnetically accelerated
projectile shot from the barrel without recoil or flash. He watched as the
projectile’s fins extended to stabilize its flight, keeping the low power scope
sighted until he saw a spark as the cable was cut.
“It’s done,” Izin said, lowering
the rifle.
“That’s impossible!” Klasson declared,
pulling out an ancient pair of binoculars from a worn case strapped to his
belt. It took him a few seconds to find the severed end of the cable, then he
whistled slowly. “Damn!” He turned to Izin, with a mix of admiration and
confusion. “I thought you said it pulled to the left?”
“It does. One millimeter every
twelve thousand meters. I compensated for it.”
“Right,” Klasson said slowly,
then he turned to me. “I want a hundred of them guns, and whatever ammo he’s
using!” He leaned toward Izin. “Any more at home like you, son?”
“There were twenty thousand in my
spawning,” Izin replied. “All genetically identical to me.”
Klasson blinked. “Can they all
shoot like you?”
“Exactly like me.”
The survivalist leader imagined
twenty thousand tamphs armed with SN6’s going to war. “Next time you’re home,
you tell your brothers to come on out here. Tell them to bring their guns. We
could use their help.”
“They would find the coastal
regions appealing, although Earth Council would be apprehensive about a large
scale migration of my kind from Earth, especially if they were armed.”
“Not to mention the rest of the
galaxy,” I whispered under my breath to Marie.
Izin turned to me. “If a maintenance team attempts
to repair the damage, am I authorized to stop them?”
“Absolutely,” I said, letting
Izin off the leash. “You’re on
overwatch
. Don’t let
them fix the sensors or get in our way, but if they run let them go.”
“As you wish,” Izin said, sliding
another round into the breach.
I turned to Klasson. “Are you
heading back now?” When we finished, Jase would do the extraction from the edge
of the base, freeing Klasson to return to Refuge.
“I might stick around a while! I
want see this tamph shoot some more!”
“My name is
Izin
Nilva
Kren.”
“Didn’t mean no offense . . . Izin.” It was the first time
Klasson had used his name, a sure sign my tamph engineer was no longer simply
an alien oddity.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Izin said. “Would you like to test
fire the weapon?”
“Hell yeah!” Klasson said, rapidly warming to Izin’s matter
of fact approach.
“I’ll keep the channel open,” I said, then Marie and I climbed
over the crest and began scrambling down into the mouth of the ancient volcano.
* * * *
The full extent of the super volcano’s one
hundred and ten kilometer caldera could only be seen from space. The far side
rim wall was hidden beyond the horizon as we scrambled down over weathered
volcanic rocks into the vast cauldron. Once on the crater floor, we used broken
rock formations and giant boulders to mask our approach to the base. It was
almost three hours before we came in sight of the patchwork of test lots
circling the BBI research facility. Between the outer test lot and our position
was an open expanse of level ground cleared to ensure anyone approaching would
be seen by the communications tower’s sensors.
Marie started to move out from
behind the boulder we used for cover, but I caught her arm and pulled her back.
“Wait.”
She gave me a puzzled look. “The
tower sensors are down.”
“I know.” I said, pulling a short
black tube from my pocket and placing it to my eye. I set the monoscope to
visual wavelengths and swept the open area ahead, zooming in to every shadow
and shape. It looked clear.
“Satisfied?” Marie asked.
“Almost.” I switched the
monoscope to infra-red with radiant surface heat suppressed and repeated the
search. This time I noticed tiny heat points circling each other to our left.
Below the heat points was a larger, faint thermal source a few degrees above
ambient temperature. I switched back to visual to discover the point sources
were insects circling low to the ground. They were the first indigenous life
forms I’d seen since landing. Lying in the dirt below the swarming insects was
a dog-sized animal with a dappled, gray hide and two short curved teeth
pointing down from its jaw. The saberwolf’s side was torn open, exposing purple
flesh and dark blood that still glistened in the sunlight. The insects swarmed
around the animal’s intestines, while its hide bordering the wound still smoldered.
I handed the monoscope to Marie
and pointed. “Over there.”
“Izin, you watching?” I asked
over the open channel.
“Yes, Captain.”
I picked up a small rock and
hurled it over the cleared ground towards the dead saberwolf. A cylindrical
autoturret mounting a short barreled cannon popped up and blasted the rock.
Before the fragments hit the ground, the autoturret had vanished back into its
bunker.
“I thought Izin took out the
sensors?” Marie said.
“It must have local targeting.”
“It came from a circular metal
plate to your left,” Izin said. “There’s another to your right, further away. They’re
close enough for their fields of fire to overlap.”
“OK. The left one first.” I
picked up another rock. “Call it.”
There was a moment’s silence
while Izin readied himself. “Throw.”
I hurled the rock, then the autoturret
immediately popped up and obliterated it, before vanishing back into its armor
plated hideout. A moment later, Izin’s slug flashed past and struck the ground
a dozen meters beyond.
“He missed!” Marie said
surprised.
“He’s getting his timing right,”
I said, picking up another rock. “Ready.”