Gregor clenched his teeth, trying to keep a neutral exterior. Augustus looked like he’d been attacked with a knife, and had the wounds cauterized with a blowtorch. Scarring covered at least fifty percent of his face, his left cheek folded inwards, as if sewn to his tongue. Small islands of dark stubble spread around his chin and jawline.
“What are you doing?” Gregor said.
“I’m showing you the price of failure. I’ll be checking how you’re getting on in a couple of days. My face should serve as a reminder of what will happen if we’re not on schedule. I’m sure you can figure out the punishment for repeated failures?”
“How do you expect—”
“I don’t expect. The croatoans expect. You’re not a special case. It’s the same the world over.”
The door flung open and a croatoan bounced in. The two guards initially turned their weapons before relaxing. It started communicating with Augustus using staccato alien noises, Gregor tried to discern Augustus’s reaction, but his mangled face was impossible to read.
“I need a moment outside,” Augustus said.
He left with the new arrival. The two guards remained inside, helmets angled down at Gregor. He reached for the whiskey bottle. The guard on the right flinched, nudging its weapon up.
“Steady, my friend. I’m just having a drink,” Gregor said.
He filled a shot glass and swallowed the whiskey in a single gulp, refilling immediately and drinking again. Gregor clenched his fist to keep his hand steady.
Augustus was setting him up for failure. Without doubling the harvesters, they had no chance. Even if the croatoans provided the machines, the ground team didn’t have enough trained humans to work in the Operations Compartments. The key to running the harvesters around the clock was the ability to carry out isolation procedures from the local control room, to allow continuing functionality. The croatoans couldn’t or wouldn’t resource it, which was part of the reason he thought his team were still alive. They needed humans for work as well as food.
The door opened. Augustus returned, mask in hand. “I take it you’ve heard the latest news?”
Gregor raised his eyebrows. “Latest news?”
After sitting back at the desk, Augustus dabbed a white folded handkerchief against a dribble of saliva, running from the corner of his mouth. “Ten croatoans dead. Ten. The harvester. You’re bringing a lot of heat down on this operation.”
“Ten dead?”
Augustus repeatedly jabbed his finger against the desk. “Two at the harvester. Two surveyors. Four searching for their killers. Two blown up, killed in a trap, following signals. Ten. T. E. N.”
The left corner of Augustus’s mouth twitched.
“It’s Jackson and his bastard son,” Gregor said. “We’ll get them. They can’t keep hiding forever.”
Augustus sighed. “You said that last year after they crashed a bulldozer through the paddock fences. Are you sure it’s them?”
“I’m positive. The harvester attacks have all followed the same pattern. Whenever we’ve interrogated survivors, they always blame him. Trust me, most of them want to keep out of our way, and hate him as much as me.”
Augustus stood and cupped the mask around his face, clipping it back in place behind his ear. “You’re incapable of sorting this out. So I will.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gregor said.
“I’ll see to Mister Charles Jackson. We’ve got a limited resource available for such situations.”
“A limited resource? I can do this, just give me time.”
“Your time will be occupied with the quotas. We had a similar situation in North Africa. A pain in the ass that wouldn’t go away. I’m sending down a croatoan hunter.”
Gregor remembered a larger, more aggressive alien during the battle of Eastern Europe. He hadn’t seen one for twenty years. No nonsense and formidable. If it crushed the little wasp, he’d shake its hand.
“Thank you, Mr. Augustus. With him out of the way, we’ll have a better chance of meeting your targets.”
Augustus held the door open and the two guards left. He turned to Gregor. “They’re not my targets, I’ve already told you. Oh, one more thing…”
“Yes, Mr. Augustus?”
“Wash your clothes. You smell like horse manure.”
GREGOR FOLLOWED Augustus and his two guards back toward to shuttle. Augustus had an annoying strut, like a peacock. He hadn’t spoken a word since his aroma barb. It was all right for Augustus, he probably had croatoans scrubbing his velvet robe and running him luxurious bubble baths on the mother ship.
The cobalt shuttle’s primed engines blasted hot air in Gregor’s face. He stopped by the edge of the clearing, as the entourage headed for the graphite ramp.
Augustus glanced back; Gregor raised his hand. The robed cretin didn’t acknowledge him and shuffled into the craft, followed by the two guards. The ramp slid into the main body, and the door hissed across and shut.
The ground rumbled as the engine noise increased, blowing dust in all directions.
The shuttle raised a few feet, paused, and zipped away in a smooth diagonal line above the trees. Gregor shielded his eyes from the lowering sun, and watched the craft bank to its left before shooting through the clouds, toward the distant vague outline of the mother ship in the spring green sky. The shuttle’s pink rings quickly disappearing into orbit.
Dust settled and surrounding trees gently rocked to a halt. Leaves brightly glistening with a greasy sheen.
A hand rested on Gregor’s shoulder. He flinched and turned, feeling for his gun.
Alex and Layla stood behind him.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he said.
“We need to talk, Gregor. Things are happening, strange things,” Layla said. “One of the croatoans grabbed me by the hair after the booby trap. I haven’t seen them behave like that before.”
Gregor shrugged. “You should have told me about that. I had to learn about it from Augustus.”
“You were already in with him when she got back,” Alex said. “We were waiting till he left.”
“If you want to know about strange things, you should have been in my office when Augustus took off his mask.”
“What did he look like?” Layla said.
Gregor ran his fingers down his cheeks. “Like he’d been bobbing for apples in acid.”
He started walking back to his office. Layla tugged at his sweater. “I meant what I said. Something’s going down, we need to talk.”
“Talk in my office. I’ve also had some news.” Gregor glanced through the trees toward the chocolate factory as he led the two women away. Three croatoans were testing a large anti-gravity trailer at the back of the warehouse. It hovered three feet in the air. One alien balanced on top of it, the other two stood at either end, moving it around in a circle.
Gregor led the way through his front door, closing it behind Alex and Layla, twisting the key and securing the bolt. He peered through the window blinds before pulling them shut.
“Augustus wants us to double our land conversion stats. We’ve got a few days to do it,” he said.
“How are we supposed to that?” Alex said.
Gregor sat in his chair and poured a whiskey. “I don’t see a way. We bent over backward to meet the current targets. The new goal came attached with a threat.”
“Jesus. What?”
“You don’t want to know. Layla, any bright ideas?”
Layla looked down, rubbing her chin. She moved across to a chart on the office wall and placed her finger on an area north east of their current location. “This is all former farmland. We concentrate here for the next few weeks. Progress will be quicker as the woodland is less dense. I’m not saying it’ll double the conversion, but if we focus on these type of areas …”