Ten
Barrett and her crew followed Gomp, who was tracking the pod of the Hive that had taken Amole and his men. The creatures had made no effort to cover their tracks, and when one group, then another, fell in alongside Barrett’s party and made no move to interfere with them, Jean decided to ignore them.
Alongside her, Tim McNeal said in a low voice, “Captain – look, two of those things are carrying torches.”
“Well, we knew they used fire.”
“Cap’n,” Gomp called. “You’ll want to see this. Come on up front.”
Jean halted the party and walked up to where Gomp stood, watching the mouth of what appeared to be a box canyon. Several groups of the Hive were gathered around; the two new groups joined them, formed a line facing the canyon mouth, and started another flashing light show.
Then they advanced, tentacles lashing.
***
The box canyon
Hudson Amole crouched behind a large rock, holding a pistol in a sweaty hand. He wasn’t sure what to do with it; he had never handled any kind of weapon before. Thomas Gantz lay a few feet away, carbine aimed at the canyon mouth. In the darkness behind Amole, the other two scouts were exploring the rock wall, trying to find a way out. Darrell Weems cowered behind his employer, his eyes wide.
“Mister Amole,” Jean Barrett’s voice called from the darkness under the trees outside the box canyon’s narrow opening.
Amole’s eyes shot open wide. “So, you’re alive?”
“Yes,” Barrett’s voice called back. “Pretty confident of staying that way, too. The Hive out here seems to be ignoring us. At least, until we try to move into the canyon. They make it pretty clear they don’t want us interfering.”
Amole considered the implications of that. “Interfering with what, Captain?”
“Well,” Jean’s voice carried a note of dark amusement, “I’m not sure. But there are sure a lot of them. More arriving every moment, too.”
“You have guns,” Amole called. “You could get us out of here by force.”
“We could try,” Barrett agreed. “But I’m afraid we don’t have enough ammo to fight our way through all of them – there has to be a couple hundred of them around here by now. They’re all armed with spears and rocks. Torches, too. Looks like there are more of them on the canyon walls. Also,” the privateer Captain pointed out, “you were more than willing to abandon us to save your own hide. Care to tell me why I should show you and yours any more concern?”
“We’re all human,” Amole shouted. “Captain, be reasonable! You can’t possibly think of letting these things kill us!”
“And yet, you are more than willing to kill them. All of them, Hudson. You wanted to wipe the planet clean of an intelligent species, only the second intelligent species we’ve ever found, just to suit your own purposes. You call yourself human?”
Under the huge, spreading tree, Jean Barrett’s rage was rapidly spiraling out of control. Hector Gomp’s face paled as his Captain shouted. “You dare call yourself human, you son of a bitch?”
Silence from the canyon.
Barrett turned and looked at her crew members. “Come on,” she ordered. “Let’s get back to the shuttle. There’s nothing more we can do here. I don’t think they’ll try to stop us.”
Jean stomped away from the mouth of the canyon, into the darkness. As he turned to follow, Gomp’s eye was caught by a flickering light from the canyon rim.
Torches. Ten, fifteen, twenty blazing torches. One by one, the torches tumbled into the brush and trees in the rear of the canyon, setting it ablaze. The Hive at the mouth of the canyon moved closer, closed ranks, rocks, and spears at the ready. The box canyon was on fire, and the Hive blocked the only way out.
Some of them would die in the fight, but that mattered little. The Hive would be safe.
Gomp shuddered. As he turned away to follow his captain, the first squawks of alarm came from the canyon as the fire spread through the dry, greasy brush.
***
The Shade Tree
Janice Dodd was examining a tissue sample from the dead Hive creature when the hatch to the medical bay swung open to admit a dirty, disheveled Jean Barrett.
“Well?” Barrett demanded without preamble.
“First of all,” Doctor Dodd insisted, “Are you hurt? How about the rest of the landing party?”
“Nothing more than bruises and scrapes,” Barrett said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get them all down here, let you look us all over. What have you found out?”
Janice Dodd waved a hand at the partially dissected creature. “They’re not really like anything I’ve ever seen before. Carbon-based life, like all the life we have found anywhere, but their biology is, well, alien. Most of the life forms found on other worlds use some variant of DNA or RNA for their biological coding, but these things use something else, a peptide nucleic acid, or PNA – I’ve never seen anything like it. Their blood chemistry is copper-based, like an Earthly squid or octopus, so that’s not all that odd, not really. They also don’t seem to have brains as such, just a non-differentiated neural net with five large nodes spotted around what we’d call a head. It’s their behavior that really sets them apart.”
“Hive mind, as you said, right?”
“So it would seem. They are intelligent — at least, as a species. They use fire, they make tools. But they don’t seem to communicate with each other by any means we can detect other than dancing and flashing, but they sure seem to be in contact over some distance. Infrasonic, maybe? They don’t seem to act as individuals – they act, as I indicated, like a swarm of insects, or a school of fish. All of them act towards a common purpose, with little or no individuality. In other words, these things are really alien, not like anything we’ve encountered before.”
“The Hive,” Barrett repeated. “Yvette picked a good name for them. We will have to report our findings to someone, I suppose. If the Confederate government has any smarts, they’ll make this place off-limits – these things, Hive or otherwise, deserve the chance to develop without us meddling.”
“I’ll have my tapes and specimens ready,” Dodd agreed.
“Good. We’ll have to take this to the Navy. It’s outside the Confederacy, so I guess they’re going to have to deal with this. Can you have your stuff prepared for transmission some time in the next day or so?”
“I suppose so, although I would prefer to present my findings to the Confederate Department of XenoBiology in person. I take it you are not all that anxious to visit Tarbos again right now?”
“Doc,” Captain Barrett said, “You have no idea.” She frowned. “But I guess we’re going to have to.”
***
Three weeks later – Tarbos
Jean Barrett stamped onto the Bridge and flung herself into her bridge chair. “Are we ready to get the hell out of here?”
Paolo Guerra was at the helm, Giorg Constantin at the Navigation console. “Where are we going, Captain?” the navigator asked.
“I don’t care,” Barrett snapped. “Just get us out of dock and past the space buoy. I’ll decide where we’re going.”
Indira Krishnavarna walked over to the captain’s chair. “Didn’t go well with the Navy, then?”
“Not even half. The Hive’s planet will be declared off-limits, of course. We expected that, right? But do you think we got so much as a pat on the back for keeping Amole and his men from engaging in a massacre? No, all they said was that we were damn lucky that Hiveworld – that’s what they’re calling it, by the way – is outside the CFB’s jurisdiction or we might all be up on charges for marooning those assholes.”
“Nice,” the XO mused.
“That’s not even half of it. They confiscated all of our data – the video, the samples, everything. They even sent a team into Doc Dodd’s lab and took the dead creature. And what credit do we get for it? What does the goddam Navy have to say about it? ‘This falls under the Official Secrets Act. Keep your mouths shut if you know what’s good for you.’” She shook her head. “I suppose I’ll have to brief the crew, make sure nobody talks out of turn.”
“They won’t be able to keep that a secret forever. For that matter, how will they keep prospectors or scouts away? Will the Navy start a patrol way out there?”
“They’ll have to.”
“What did the Xenobiology people say?”
“They’ll get all the samples. Sooner or later there will be a study published – in a couple of decades.”
The XO looked thoughtful. “Well,” she said at last, “Not much we can do about that. But I do have a lead on some work, if you want to hear about it.”
“Sure, may as well. At least we got our pay out of Amole – but it won’t last forever.”
“There are a bunch of religious types, calling themselves missionaries, on Earth. They’re looking for passage to Zed.”
“Zed? Over by the Grugell frontier?”
“Even so.”
“Well,” Jean mused. “We haven’t been to Earth in a while. I wouldn’t mind a look at the place again.” She leaned forward in her chair. “Giorg – best trajectory for Earth. We’re going to go pick up some preachers.”
***
…
…
Is everyone off watching tentacle porn?
No, only Sean is.
Lies! Slander!
*searches for attorney*
Truth is an absolute defense to slander and libel.
My search histories may be sordid, but they don’t include *that*.
the UK says “hold my beer”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_and_emotional
I see you weren’t invited to the party either.
Nice ending, Animal. Glad to see Amole got what he deserved.
Eagerly waiting the next installment.
UGH! SGammo, stop tempting me with your sales!
>.>
I see nothing. I hear nothing.
I know nothing.
Ignorance is bliss.
Freedom is slavery
Amazing the way the left came to believe this so thoroughly
I’m lost…
I have no idea what Sean is talking about, and realize that I’m probably better off not.
I have purchased many cases from SGammo.
I don’t need to hear about exciting new offers.
The good news is that work blocks sites like this, and I will forget by time I get home.
https://www.sgammo.com/ammo-case-end-year-clearance-sale-sgammo
Anyone looking for carry ammo?
https://www.sgammo.com/product/9mm-luger-ammo/500-round-case-9mm-high-pressure-147-grain-jacketed-hollow-point-winchester-d
kinnath: keep in mind that Orwell, Rand, Huxley, More, Huxley, Bradbury et al were not making shit uo. They were writing down what they had seen with their own eyes.
Amazing the way the left came to believe this so thoroughly
Courtesy of our old fiend, Rousseau – for whom it was entirely logical that you might have to be forced to be free because you didn’t see freedom as he did.
Aristotle argued at great length that subjugation is the natural and right state of man, that the loners were ‘wild’ and uncivilized.
I will grant this: in a world with crude technology where one’s hands alone cannot produce abundance collective effort even if involuntary may seem the obvious course. In other words if you could go back and tell people that slavery is evil they would probably explain to you that dooming everyone to starvation is evil and then stone you to death.
Aristotle lived in a society with a lot of slaves, and knew good and well that his standard of living depending on slaves. Of course he was an apologist for subjugation and involuntary servitude. And he was influential in the pro-slavery arguments during the Enlightenment.
As I learn a little more about the French Revolution, which had Rousseau’s stink all over it, the more I blame it for the current collectivist ideologies. They went straight from “divine right of kings”, which at least had some boundaries on it due to tradition and history, to “the general will”, which allows any horror you can imagine.
Thus our Republic and not a democracy. Thus the electoral college. Thus the pre-17th amendment America.
I realize our constitution is a giant pile of compromise but it turned out miraculously well. Despite that we started moving away from it before the ink was dry (alien and sedition act).
Two things I would change – life, liberty and bullshit to life, liberty and PROPERTY – enshrine allodial title nationally. Might have to tweak the allodial title a bit.
It is still the crippling thing called a nation-state and splitting the sovereign pie into parts still leaves a whole pie.
Animal tees up Zed to us and not one crack from Zardoz or Pulp Fiction? Must be the holiday spirit(s).
Ignorance is
blissStrengthAnother school shooting?
I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a mass shooting every day until the inauguration.
Looks like a student committed murder/suicide. At least that’s what I got from quickly browsing one story.
If you include inner city business disputes, we pretty much do anyway.
Speaking of “Freedom is Slavery” I turn back to the Vox thing about Bobbie the Lesser I stubbed my toe on a few days ago. It was shot through with horrified bleating about the toxicity of individualistic rejection of egghead science. How can some unwashed nobody dare to think himself the equal of a credentialed Wise One? Settled science is settled. Questioning authority strictly verboten.
There was a meme some time over the last week or so.
Liberals 50 years ago: “You can’t make me do that!”
Liberals now: “We will make you do that!”
There used to be a thing called “informed consent” once.
I love how they skate past the part where that “authority” could be corrupt.
Appeal to authority is a formal logical fallacy.
Leftist mentality seems to have raised violating every single logical rule to high art. They dont miss a single one. Hell they even have appeal to inappropriate authority.
Unfalsifiable assertions are not science.
Looks like a student committed murder/suicide. At least that’s what I got from quickly browsing one story.
Faculty lounge love triangle?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/shooting-reported-christian-school-madison-wisconsin-police/story?id=116835038
The suspected shooter, a juvenile believed to be a student, is also dead.
About 390 students from kindergarten through 12th grade attend the school.
broken mind . . . broken heart . . .
who knows
I got a new car.
https://x.com/PulpLibrarian/status/1868757142230216974
Is that car even wide enough for someone in th passenger seat?
When the doors are only 2 inches thick you get a lot more interior room.
Mind you they won’t even contain the door components in even the lowest speed impact. OTH, whatever hit the door likely weighs less than half of today’s vehicles.
You’re 1970s Tony Iommi? How’s Ozzy doing?
I’m not sure. I can’t understand a word he says.