“The initial complement upon landing was only six effectives.”
“Six?” asked the nife, incredulous. He almost dropped the shaggy jax haunch he had been gnawing on.
The Parent took a moment to slip her food tube into the skull of a jax and slurp out a good portion of the brain before continuing. “Of the task force only our one ship made it through. Fortunately, we have yet to encounter serious resistance. Our original complement included an arl, a killbeast, two trachs, an umulk and a culus with her ingrown shrade. Of that group, we lost only the arl in a planned diversionary maneuver.”
“Ah yes, I picked that up from the datastream briefing in my cocoon. A nice maneuver, sending off the majority of the ship with the arl to lead away the enemy’s atmospheric fighters. The umulk, of course, was a requirement for digging the nest. The culus and shrade, however,” the nife paused and made a gesture indicating perplexity. “I don’t understand your reasoning there, given how limited our defenses were. What if it had come down to an immediate fight?”
“Then the plan would have failed and we would all have died,” replied the Parent with an unconcerned shrug. “I deduce that you are thinking I should have birthed a second killbeast for security?”
The nife bobbed his stalks in assent, too busy with a mouthful of slippery intestines to vocalize a reply.
“You could be right, but I reasoned that if the landing ruse had failed, if it had come down to an immediate fight, then the whole invasion would have been a failure anyway. One killbeast wouldn’t have made the difference in such a battle. On the other hand, planning for the best case, getting the valuable military intelligence that the culus and shrade can provide is very helpful. Without them, we would be virtually blind right now. Proper reconnaissance is critical at this early stage.
“Your decision shows cunning and foresight.”
“Thank you. To answer your original question as to our strength, I can say that with your hatching we now have one nife, a battlegroup of killbeasts, a squad of umulks, three culus and shrade teams, two teams of trachs and six hests. In another forty-eight hours, we will have another four more battlegroups of killbeasts and more of each of the other types. At that time too, I will have to consider melding to conceive more daughters. One Parent can’t populate a whole planet alone.”
“What about juggers?” asked the nife immediately.
“I have jugger zygotes in the birthing chambers now, but have halted their gestation until we formulate our attack plans. They simply eat too much and can do no useful work other than in battle. It would be bad logistic practice to birth them too soon.”
At this the nife waved his claws briskly, signaling an emphatic negative. “I must differ with you and urge you to produce as many juggers as you can immediately. They take a longer time than most in the cocoon stage anyway, and we simply must have them for security purposes. For serious defense or offense, the killbeasts alone aren’t enough.”
The Parent ruminated on this a moment, mashing raw flesh with slow movements of her mandibles. “I bow to your greater genetic prowess in warfare. I am by nature conservative, perhaps too much so in an offensive campaign.”
“Secondly,” continued the nife. “There is the lack of arls to contend with.”
Again, the Parent shrugged. “We have no more need of pilots. There is no means of manufacturing imperial battlecraft on this planet, probably not for the duration of the campaign.”
The nife waved away her argument impatiently. “Of course not, but the enemy have such craft. We must be prepared to make use of their equipment, as we have no mass-transport technology of our own. For this reason maintaining a cadre of arls is essential.”
Again the Parent ruminated and assented to his judgment. Once the production goals were set, their attentions turned to the flesh they were consuming. Both found that they preferred the flesh of the humans slightly over that of the jaxes. Although it was more spare on the bone, it tended to have more flavor, probably due to greater variety in the diet. Both of them agreed after careful tasting of the limbs and abdomens of various specimens, that the female probably tasted the best. The flesh was soft and generally had a higher fat-content.
Rasping upon something hard in her mandibles, the Parent indelicately picked at her serrated grinding spikes with her tentacles and pulled loose a metal object. It was a spacer’s watch that had once belonged to Jimmy Herkart and to Bili Engstrom before him. Tossing it aside, she went back to chewing.
One of the Hests scuttled out of a gloomy tunnel and snatched up the gleaming piece of metal. To the creature’s vast disappointment, she found the watch to be inedible. She carried the ruined watch away and deposited it down one of the rubbish tunnels where most of the bones from the endless feast in the throne chamber were going.
Eleven
Captain Dorman returned to the spaceport aboard a rescue-lifter. He was set down on top of the parking garage and managed to walk unaided into the terminal building. His head was ringing and his left shoulder was sore from the ride down into the jungle canopy strapped unconscious to the ejector seat. He refused the medical team, however, and headed directly into the security center to meet the new governor. Jarmo met him at the door, and after a cursory inspection allowed him through. Another intimidating giant named Jun followed him wherever he went in the center.
“Hello Captain,” the Governor greeted him warmly, clasping his hand. “I hope you’re all right, quite a hairy mission as it turned out. Frankly, I’m amazed that a pirate spacecraft could do battle with two Stormbringers on equal footing. I’m anxious to hear your report on the matter.”
“That wasn’t just a smuggler, sir,” replied Dorman, marveling a bit at how easy it was to fall into the subordinate role with this man. It was clear he was used to giving orders and seeing them obeyed. “It was a combat ship, as good as anything the Nexus fleet has.”
The Governor nodded. Dorman believed that he had already reached these conclusions.
“Jun, could you bring up the current scene on the holo-plate?” asked the Governor.
Jun worked a keyboard with over-sized fingers, punching up an image on the holo-plate that dominated the conference table. The image was a fuzzy, military-spec holo of the jungle where the smuggler had first appeared. A line of trees was down where the ship had ditched its cargo. “This is where they dropped their load and ran for it,” said the Governor.
“What were they carrying? Did we recover the cargo?”
“No,” the Governor said, shaking his head and frowning. “There was nothing there but a tunnel leading into the mountain. The lifter we sent out to investigate put in a recon team, but they found that the tunnel dead-ended into solid rock half a mile into the Polar Range.”
“A tunnel?” said Dorman perplexedly, rubbing his sore temples.
The holo-plate image shimmered as the camera landed in the newly made clearing. Floating just above the heads of the recon team, it followed them to the mouth of a huge black hole in the fresh earth.
“A very large tunnel, big enough for men to stand upright in. The payload landed right in the middle of it.”
“It would take a week to dig such a thing,” marveled Dorman. “Seems amazing that they could land the payload that precisely under combat conditions.”
The image on the holo-plate dimmed then flickered out.
The Governor shrugged. “A mystery. I’m very new to my office, and was hoping you could shed some light on it.”
“I also wanted to speak to you about that, sir,” said Dorman, straightening in his chair. “About your new office, that is.”
“Proceed.”
“As a Nexus officer, I offer my support to you, sir, provided you can produce proof of your identity.”
Without a word the Governor ran his ID card through the terminal embedded in the conference table and waited as Dorman convinced himself that the data was genuine.