Stories of the Confederated Star Systems (13 page)

“Sir, we did learn…”

“Not enough! Damnit! Not enough. It seemed willing to talk. And we blew it. I blew it.” The captain stalked over to the command station and sat heavily in the chair. “Set course for Hobson’s Choice Station. This is not something that we can sit on.”

“Sir, what do we report?” Commander Steinman asked, leaning against the sensor panel.

“We came, we saw, we screwed up. After this, the
Virgin
is likely to be called the
Whore
, and we, my crew, will probably never again leave the confines of the Confederation. What a thrilling prospect.”

* * *

Soft Tiny Seeker of Knowledge, Velvet Rabbit to the humans, listened to the hyperwave sensors that it had secreted on the human ship. The humans were so limited to have reached the stars. Limited physically, limited in knowledge, and
oh
so limited in maturity. Bright Strong Seeker of Planets had spoken of the humans and downloaded the pertinent files to allow it to see them for itself. Now it considered the implications of contacting this new life form. What would the Creators say about its encounter? Had it done right? When it reported, would the Creators find fault with it, as the human’s feared that those they reported to would find them at fault? Extending the electromagnetic lightsails that carried it beyond the speed of the photonic barrage, Soft Tiny Seeker of Knowledge set a course for the homeworld, five hundred light-years away. The Creators needed to learn what she now knew.

“Seeker” © 1999

Szekely, pronounced
sek
-lee, is the name of a region in Europe.

S
ZEKELY CLAMBERED UP THE TREE TO
get a better view of the strangers that had invaded his people’s territory. And strange they were. Short, almost furless creatures, he was tempted to dismiss them as primitives until he saw what they were doing. No primitives had made those shining metal poles or the brightly lit boxes of black material they were stacking about. Their skins varied in color from deep cavern black to dry-grass gold, but some had an almost frightening blood-blue on their bodies. Most of them had a different color of skin on their faces and hands. The fur on their heads varied from damp-dirt brown to dry-grass gold, and many had several colors mixed together in no discernable pattern.

Their hands fascinated him, for they were very close to his own in shape. Indeed, if he hadn’t seen the extra digit he might have called them identical, except for the ridiculous shortness of the digits.

But if their hands fascinated him, their faces repelled him. Flat, almost featureless, they resembled the slime-eating bottom dwellers that inhabited the foulest swamps. It was only that none of them were the sky-green of the bottom dwellers that kept him from vomiting.

They seemed to be setting up a camp of some kind, though it didn’t look like any camp he had ever seen before. A simple frame of metal poles with a woven covering would be no protection against the ragna that were beginning to swarm. A thread of dark humor almost made him snort. The ragna swarm would chase these creatures, whatever they were, back where they had come from.

Carefully making his way to the ground, Szekely raced away, back toward his own camp. He wanted stout stone walls and scented smoke around him before the ragna took to the air.

* * *

Lieutenant Commander Eric (The Red) Carlson, of the Confederated Star Systems Scout Ship
Pristine Virgin
, stood on the loamy soil of the planet and stared at the huge plants that were this world’s analog to trees. For a pleasant change, they actually looked like trees, even if they were a bit too blue. He shook his head slowly as his gaze continued to climb. Greenish blue sky, bluish green plants. Could this place get any stranger? The awareness that he was being watched drew his attention back to the camp.

Yep, Commander Steinman was watching him.
Probably thought I was woolgathering. I wonder where
that
phrase came from and what it originally meant?
He quickly walked to the Executive Officer’s side and saluted.

“Sir, I’d like to get a camera up in one of those trees. They look stable enough for a high-mag unit.”

The Executive Officer gave him one of those,
“Yeah, right,”
looks, then nodded. “All right, Eric, go play. How you ended up with photography as a hobby, I’ll never understand. Just don’t fall. Captain’s not in the best of moods right now.”

“Yes, sir,” Eric immediately agreed. Since their abortive encounter with the sentient ship called Velvet Rabbit, the
Pristine Virgin
had been given nothing but milk runs and escort duty. This mission, to explore an unremarkable primitive planet that didn’t even have a name, just the catalogue number M389-4, was theirs by accident. If the
Tel Aviv
hadn’t fried her hyperdrive, they would be exploring while the
Virgin
was off delivering mail or escorting freighters.

Eric quickly gathered up one of the high-resolution optical cameras, and a high magnification digital unit as well, and headed toward the trees. He had noticed a clear spot high above the camp that should give him a magnificent view of the area. Climbing the tree was no trouble at all. It had numerous branches, spaced two to three feet apart. For Eric, who had grown up in the forests of the western North American Continent, it was almost like home. Except for the broad blue-green leaves.

He reached the clear spot he had seen and stopped. He had to. The next limb was three meters above him, and the trunk of the tree was so smooth it may as well have been sanded. Bracing himself, he started taking pictures.

He started with the digital, taking a series of pictures of the camp and surrounding area for the record. Once he had a good set of “official” pictures, he touched the transmit stud and downloaded them to the expedition’s main computer. Duty done, he started enjoying himself.

The big optical camera was an anachronism, but he didn’t care. There was just something about the feel of the camera and the finicky details of the development process that fascinated him. Eric held the camera up and started taking long distance pictures of the forest and distant hills. Using the telephoto lens as a telescope, he searched for anything interesting, and clicked a picture whenever he found something new. Given the situation he was in, that meant he was almost continuously clicking away.

Too soon he found himself out of film. Sighing, he began his climb down from the tree. As he climbed, he started noticing something odd. At intervals much farther apart than he could reach there were slits in the bark. Nothing major, just the appearance that something had dug claws into the tree in the recent past. Shrugging it away, he reached the ground and returned to camp.

Commander Steinman met him at the perimeter. “Anything good?”

Nodding, Eric held up the camera. “I think so. I’ll have to develop these first to be sure, but this forest is enormous. I got good pictures of…” Steinman held up a hand to stop him.

“Just develop the film and show me. I swear, Eric, the way you carry on sometimes is almost frightening.”

Eric managed to maintain a dignified silence as he nodded to the Executive Officer and walked over to the portable developer that was part of their equipment. Placing the film in the developer and closing the light-tight lid, he put his arms into the sealed gloves and began developing the film. He hummed to himself as he did everything by touch. He could have let the automatic system do it, but he enjoyed the processing of the film almost as much as taking the pictures.

It took most of an hour doing it the hard way, but he soon had a stack of eighteen by twenty-three centimeter prints to show his superiors and add to his scrapbook. He joined the rest of the landing party at supper at the far end of the tent,.

“Here you go, Sir. I haven’t been able to do a detailed analysis yet, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything special in them.”

“Very good, Mr. Carlson. Take your seat and eat quickly. The stewards are almost ready to clear the table.”

“Yes, Sir.” Eric sat and applied himself to his meal while the pictures were passed around. Then something buzzed his ear. “Damn! Why does every planet, primitive or civilized, have mosquitoes?”

“I doubt you need to worry about them, Eric,” Lieutenant Ian said softly in her ever so sweet voice. “If they bit you, they’d probably die a horrible death.” For a change, she didn’t add a smirk at the end of her comment.

“Because of the blood, Ma’am?” her assistant asked and received a nod in reply.

“Precisely. These aren’t mosquitoes as we know them. While they are carbon-based life forms, their blood isn’t iron-based, as ours is. It’s cobalt-based.”

“Are you sure of that, Jen?” Commander Steinman asked, leaning forward. “I wasn’t aware that was possible.”

Jen Ian smiled and shook her head. “You never know if something is possible until someone does it. I’m sure, Sir. We ran the analysis five times on the blood sample we got from that rodent, or whatever it was. Where our hemoglobin uses iron, theirs uses cobalt. We’ve already tested several insect analogs as well, and all show cobalt blood. Be careful about squashing one. It’ll leave a nasty…” A howl of surprise and pain interrupted her.

One of the stewards was running toward the kitchen portion of the tent, clasping her arm. A swarm of the ‘mosquitoes’ chased her, tangling in her hair and drawing more screams in the process.

“Shields up!”
Commander Steinman instinctively shouted as the group scattered. “Get the repulser fields up now!”

Eric had run to the kitchen and found the steward writhing on the ground, almost completely engulfed in the swarm of insects, with blood soaking through her white coat. Other crewmen and women were swatting at the creatures and being attacked in turn. Eric did the only thing he could think of and grabbed a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher and started spraying the bugs that were attacking the steward.

At first there didn’t seem to be any lessening in the intensity of the attack, then the bugs started falling to the ground. Eric kept up his efforts until the extinguisher ran dry. By then there were only a few of the nasty little creatures still alive and he took to swatting them from the air with the bell of the extinguisher hose.

All around the camp, men and women were assessing the damage the bugs had done. Commander Allerbech, the Assistant Medical Officer, was kneeling beside the steward when Commander Steinman reached her side.

“She’s covered with bites. All over. These things take about half a cubic centimeter each bite. I’ve got to get her back to the ship. Doctor Kenissire is going to have to help me with this.”

“Look at her arm,” Steinman said, pointing. There was a smear of blue, surrounded by the red of blood.

The doctor nodded as she worked. “It looks like she squashed one. That may have triggered the attack. Some insects back on Old Earth did that, like some species of bees. One attacks and they all attack. These probably wouldn’t have done more than annoy us until one of them was killed. Then they reacted by swarming to attack. Every time we killed one, it caused the rest to go berserk. But Jen was right as well.” She pointed to the ground. “Biting us was fatal to them.”

“I thought I…”

“No, Eric, I don’t think so. There are dead bugs all over the camp, not just here where you were spraying them. It was a good try, though.”

Eric gave Commander Steinman a sour look, then nodded. “Looks like she’s right, Sir.”

“Uh huh. Look at the shields and you’ll see she’s also right about them all attacking at once.” Steinman flicked a thumb over his shoulder.

Eric looked and was chilled by the sight. The shields were meant to stop pests like mosquitoes and flies, and they performed quite well stopping these pests as well. But no pest had ever swarmed the shields like this, forming an almost solid mass against the barrier. “There must be millions of them. Can we be sure that’s why they attacked? She might have swatted the nasty little critter because it bit her.”

Jen Ian walked over to the side of the camp, but carefully stopped several feet back from the shields. “Watch,” she said over her shoulder and deliberately crushed a few bugs in her hands.

The bugs on the other side of the shield went wild. They fought the shields and each other, trying to get at the creature that had killed one of their kind.

“Hive mentality, Sir. Any threat to one member of the hive is a threat to the entire hive, and the entire hive reacts. I can’t imagine anything surviving an attack like this.”

Commander Steinman nodded. “I can’t imagine that we’ll be able to get to the shuttle through them, either.” Looking over his shoulder, he waited until the doctor looked up before continuing. “Doctor Allerbech, do everything you can for Jenkins, but we’re stuck here for the time being. I’m just hoping that the sun will drive them back to wherever they came from.”

A comtech rating came to attention next to the commander. “Sir, Captain’s on the horn. Someone hit the emergency squawker when the bugs attacked.”

Commander Steinman nodded and walked over to the communications system. “XO here. We’ve been attacked by bugs, Sir. They appear to be a hive creature that swarms when one of their number is attacked. Mess Steward Jenkins has been bitten dozens of times, and Doctor Allerbech is concerned that she might need help treating Jenkins. Unfortunately, we are cut off from the shuttle by the swarm and are unable to evacuate her.”

Captain Corban nodded once in the display. “Understood, Commander. Should we attempt a rescue, or are you secure?”

“We’re secure for now, Sir. The repulser fields have the bugs stopped. We didn’t see any sign of them during the day, so I’m hoping that these are nocturnal creatures and will retreat when the sun rises. We’ll know in the morning. I’ll have a full report ready for you by then, Sir.”

The captain nodded as he made a note. “Very well. I’m putting the other three shuttle crews on alert, and I’m having the Master-At-Arms force and Marines stand by to suit up in battle-armor. Do what you can for Jenkins, but do not do anything that will further jeopardize your people. Understood?”