“Good,” he said. The Colonel was already returning to his transport ship, leaving a pair of Marines on the station along with the secured prisoners. “Prepare to land the landing force.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Good water, yes?”
Simon Alenichev nodded, sipping the water and trying not to edge away from the creature facing him. The crab-like creature, a strange combination of crab and octopus, was equally at home on the land or in the water, but the Garak’Tor preferred to live in the water. There were only a handful of aliens on the penal colony, most of them preferring to keep their distance from the humans, yet he’d managed to make contact with one small colony. They could help each other, even though the aliens touched off every phobia humanity had about insects and underwater monsters.
“Yes,” he said. He suspected that the Garak’Tor were actually more intelligent than humans — a few hundred years of difference and it might have been their empire that overran humanity’s, rather than the other way around — but they were limited to very basic communication without computers and other high tech. The alien’s mouth could barely shape Imperial Standard, while no human could duplicate their language. “It is very good water.”
He straightened up and looked around. Two days ago, a flash-flood had roared down the valley, scouring it clear of life. The planet’s indomitable wildlife was already starting to reclaim the area, bringing with it the dangerous animals that threatened the lives of everyone on the planet. Only Haven, as far as they knew, was relatively safe from the planet’s defenders… and that only through constant patrols and careful precautions. The weather on the planet was unpredictable, to the point where Simon and the other leaders of the small colony feared that one day a powerful storm would destroy their colony and leave them exposed to the planet’s wildlife. The Empire had definitely known what it was doing when it sent the involuntary colonists to the planet. It would probably kill them all eventually.
The trade between humans and Crabs — as most humans called them — was based around water and small supplies. The Crabs could tell if water was clean and pure — water bubbled up from great underground reservoirs, sometimes pure and sometimes very unclean — without running the risk of poisoning themselves. Humanity had the only industrial base on the planet, although it was very primitive by the standards of the Empire, allowing them to trade basic weapons and equipment in exchange. He picked up the small bag of swords and other tools, passing it over to the alien, which took it in one clawed hand. Even watching the alien sent a chill down his spine.
“I’ll meet you in one week,” he said, as the Crab turned and started to scuttle away, down towards the deeper lake. They had an entire colony underwater, the envy of the humans who watched from the shore, although Simon had a suspicion that the planet’s wildlife was attacking their colony with just as much determination as it was attacking Haven. “We’ll be waiting…”
He turned and walked away from the shore, careful to stay on the sand that had been deposited there by the flash-flood. The planet’s most dangerous wildlife resembled nothing so much as giant snakes, but they seemed to swim through the soil and appear just when they were ready to strike, right underneath their victim. The alert watcher could spot signs of their presence and prepare to stab the snake with a spear as soon as they arrived; the unwary died, often without knowing what had hit them. The Empire had told them that if they tamed the world, they could have it for themselves, but Simon privately doubted that it was possible. It was far more likely that, one day, Haven would fall and the colony would be destroyed. And then there were the crazies.
The Empire hadn’t been very discriminating when it unloaded its problem cases onto the planet’s surface. Rebels like Simon — he’d led an underground movement that had eventually been broken open by the Empire’s security forces — had been shipped to the planet, accompanied by petty criminals, victims of intrigue and outright psychopaths. The criminally insane hadn’t thought about cooperating, or about obeying some laws for the greater good; they’d just sought to turn a hellish world into even more of a nightmare. They’d formed roving gangs of bandits, attacking Haven and the handful of other colonies, with no ambition, but destruction. Simon remembered fighting off the last attack, a raid that had threatened to break through Haven’s defences, and shivered. One day their luck would run out and Haven would fall.
His walk took him up the stony hill — he suspected that it was a dead volcano — and towards the small town. The defenders had built a wall around their village, a combination of hard wood from the trees that grew on the surface and stone, even a primitive form of cement. It was pitiful compared to what the Empire could have built, but they’d been denied any form of high technology. They’d had to look to the past and develop blacksmiths and gunsmiths, creating weapons and tools that the Empire would have considered laughable. There had been no choice. Without at least some weapons, they were doomed.
He snorted. The Empire had thoughtfully provided them with farming tools and even some seeds. What the Empire hadn’t realised — or simply hadn’t cared about enough to notice — was that there was little solidity outside Haven. They’d tried to grow crops, but the native wildlife — or the bandits — destroyed them. Their only source of food was hunting the Earth-native life that had carved out a niche on the planet’s surface and the handful of native plants that humans could eat. The native wildlife, typically, was poisonous to humans. The bandits used it to poison their spears.
Simon might have been the elected chief of the village, but his house was no bigger than any other house. He stepped inside — pausing to look at the five metre-long snake skeleton he’d hung on the side of the house, one he’d killed a day after his arrival on the planet — and smiled at his wife. Alice had been a petty criminal when she’d been sentenced to exile and transported to the penal world. Now… there was nothing to steal and she had adapted herself to her new life. None of the settlement’s women were ever allowed outside the wall. The bandits, if they caught a woman, would use her dreadfully and then kill her. They were too crazy, driven mad by their environment, to even think about the future.
“Hey,” Alice said, with a wave. There were times when he wondered if she was going a little crazy herself — if they were all going a little crazy. “What did the Crabs have to say?”
“The new springs are drinkable,” Simon said, shortly. He sat down on a stool and watched his wife, feeling tiredness and despair creeping over him. “And we’d better move quickly to take what we can. There are other humans in the area.”
Alice’s eyes widened. She’d nearly been captured by bandits when her one-way pod had crashed on the planet’s surface. “There are more bandits in the area?”
“No way of knowing,” Simon said. “They could have picked up one of our parties and…”
He broke off as a sonic boom echoed out, high overhead. The sound was so unexpected that he thought, just for a moment, that it was thunder. The planet’s eerie weather was known for producing weird effects, including a display of thunder and lightning that had resembled a planetary assault underway. The first boom was followed by others, suggesting…
Simon pulled himself to his feet, his wife a second behind him, and ran out of the hut’s door. Outside, the watchers, permanently on guard against wildlife or bandits, were staring up towards the sky, where a series of lights were ploughing their way down towards the planet. Simon felt Alice grab his arm as the shuttles turned, heading back towards the settlement, but he was too surprised to respond. It had been made clear to him, during the brief stay on the orbital station, that there would never be any relief. No shuttles would come down to the planet, ever… yet they were here. He felt his mouth opening, but no words emerged. Had the Empire tired of watching them struggling to survive on the surface of their world, or had they merely decided to bring more criminals to the planet’s surface?