“No, sir, it’s erm, fine, really, just a few minor issues with the livestock. We’ve got it in hand.”
“Then activate the procedure.”
Augustus kept the channel open and waited. Vlad fussed at the console and looked up through his lank hair. But he wasn’t fooling anyone.
“There’s a problem with our mainframe, sir. I’ll get it fixed right away.”
Augustus brought up a second console window on his desktop screen, patched into Farm 1038’s system, and ran a diagnostic. In hindsight, the croatoan hierarchy should have made everything automated from the mother ship. It was too risky to have left any procedure in the hands of the humans, but the aliens were hot on trust. They said many times over the centuries since being on the Earth that trust was always the first way to cooperation. Force should only come if that trust was proven to be less than optimal, and force could fix anything that trust broke.
Looking down at the diagnostic report, he felt the bounds of trust retreat from the breaking point. It appeared that Vlad was indeed telling the truth. The mainframe was reporting an error in one of its processor cores.
“I’ll give you an hour to fix it before I send help,” Augustus said, emphasizing that last word.
“Thank you, sir, we’ll send a report right away when it’s done. Sorry to delay things.”
“I’ll expect a report within the hour.” With that, Augustus closed the connection and shut down both screens. Immediately, a new session started. This time, the screen filled with the image of his old friend.
Hagellen smiled on screen, stretching his wide, turtle-like mouth, his ancient face shown in super-high definition. Augustus didn’t know how old he was but, from his stories, calculated he must be at least five hundred thousand in Earth years. The compound had made his leathery skin look almost like bark.
The alien was one of the hierarchy members. Although Augustus would never fully understand their cultural organization, the mother ship had a clear organization structure. There was Hagellen and three others that made up a command module; they decided what happened here on Earth and set the schedules.
Beneath them was a council of five others who oversaw various aspects of planetary colonization. Augustus was an honorary member of that council with his role earmarked as taking over the planet once the terraforming was complete.
The idea was that once things were running well, they would move a population of croatoan citizens to live on Earth while the mother ship and its hierarchy would head off to their next project, which could be thousands of years in the making, with Hagellen and the others going back into their stasis pods until whatever planet they had found would be ready for the same procedure.
“Hagellen, old friend, to what I do owe this pleasure?”
“Valens, my friend,” the alien said in his clicking language. Augustus had picked it up over the years. Although he would never fully understand the nuance, he knew enough to be able to translate on the fly. “The terraforming ship is one of your days away. We’ll soon dock and initiate the final procedure. Is all well with your systems?”
“All working as expected. There’s a small delay on one of the farms but nothing that will prevent the plan from going ahead.”
“I noticed that you ordered Baliska to the surface. That seems a drastic action at this time. Is there something I and the council should be aware of?”
Baliska was the hunter Augustus had ordered down to deal with that meddling little bastard, Charlie Jackson. Seeing as Gregor couldn’t cope with him, he needed to do something. Though in the grand scheme of things, Jackson wasn’t a huge problem. “There’s a tiny resistance on the surface. Baliska hasn’t been hunting in three decades. After he arrived here from his sojourn on your jungle planet, he wanted a new challenge, so I decided to take advantage of his desire to find and eliminate this resistant human before he had the opportunity to become a bigger issue later.”
“That’s understandable,” Hagellen said, shaking his head side-to-side slowly, which was the croatoan way of agreeing. The aliens had a complicated set of body language that Augustus had never quite got the hang of. It seemed to change on so many different nuances, and with him not understanding the language at a fundamental level, he was never exposed to those nuances. With a race as ancient as the croatoans, he didn’t expect to learn all that in just a few decades of waking time.
“Was there anything else, old friend?” Augustus said.
“Not for now. Inform me when the final farm has initiated the pressurization. I’ll inform you when the terraforming ship has successfully docked with us.”
“Will it take long, the atmospheric change?”
“Everything is but a blink of our eyes, Valens. You know this.” Hagellen squinted his large, black eyes slightly, which meant that it was a lighthearted phrase. The croatoans never laughed as such, rather, via their eyelid movements they indicated acceptance or rejection of the attempt at humor.
Augustus never bothered to figure out what made them ‘laugh.’ There was too much risk of insulting them. He’d lasted this long by usually only speaking when spoken to and keeping his interactions with them strictly about business. To get personal with a croatoan council member was to go into a battle with a multi-headed hydra with the ability to kill you faster than you could blink.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Hagellen said before the channel on the screen closed.
Augustus leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He let the hum of the ship enter his body. He pictured Earth, a bright blue marble in the dense black of space. “Soon, you’ll be mine.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Gregor watched the front of the clock tower from inside the remains of a crumbling brick building. The cover from here was perfect. He was obscured by thick ivy that almost completely wrapped the building. Poking his rifle through the plant gave him a perfect shot.
Ben lay snoozing next to him. They’d spent all night walking by the side of roads and fighting their way through woodland, trying to find the former town in time to set up an ambush.
Charlie Jackson would not catch him loitering by the clock tower. This meeting was going to be on Gregor’s terms.
His stomach growled, but food could wait. All he’d eaten in the last twelve hours were two unripe apples from a nearby tree. Gregor kicked himself for not grabbing some supplies from the building by the reservoir. By the time he realized his error, they were heading to Ridgway. At least it wasn’t raining. The sun beat down on them through a large hole in the collapsed roof.
Layla knelt beside him and swiped some leaves to one side. “Still no sign of them?”
“Nothing,” Gregor said. He looked at Ben. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”
She checked her watch. “If he was, Jackson’s nearly an hour late.”
“Or he’s got his own vantage point. I’m not moving first.” Gregor shook Ben’s leg. He twitched awake and looked back, bleary-eyed. “Are you sure he said noon?”
“Positive. I’ve told you several times already. Why would I lie?”
Ben’s question was exactly what had started preying on Gregor’s mind. He could lie to lead them into an ambush. Jackson might’ve been in the process of surrounding the area.
The instruction was given in the belief that Gregor was still running the camp. Maybe it was to draw him away so Charlie could attack.
He wondered if Alex and Vlad were still alive. The croatoans didn’t seem to recognize feelings or attachments between humans. With a bit of luck, they’d still be feeding the livestock and monitoring inside the chocolate factory. Gregor had to get them free before Augustus got his claws into them.