A Planet For Emily

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. Avoiding them afterwards 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 schoolgirl 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 with someone restarting the Neanderthals, 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? From 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,” said Rods.