Aliens Vs. Humans (Aliens Series Book 4) (17 page)

“Butchering bastards!” spat out Archibald.

Which the Rizen clearly were. Ten Rizen lion-rhinos, looking to be half the size of the local elephants, were culling elephant calves. A six-legged Rizen stood at a narrow gate and, as a single calf came through in its effort to rejoin the herd, the calf was grasped by the Rizen with its two black-taloned foot-hands and pulled to its shark-like mouth. Razor sharp teeth clamped on the neck under the small trunk and bit, then pulled back. Leaving a pink flesh gap from which red blood gushed out. The small calf gave a wild squeal through its trunk, then collapsed to the ground. Blood spurted out onto the ground. The Rizen’s black eyes fixed on the small body, then it lifted up its dome-head to the sky and swallowed with a shudder of throat muscles that was graphic in its depiction of flesh passing down into the gullet of the sleekly-muscled predator.

“Fresh meat!” the Rizen hooted loudly as red rivulets ran from its slash of a mouth. Rearing back on its hind leg pair, the calf killer turned its thick neck and head to the rear where its fellows waited. “Time for our annual feast, Pod Hungry. Let the other Hunters each claim a Doomat offering. Then the mothers of the pod may follow.”

Behind the bloody scene a dozen of the watching elephant Aliens shifted position, their large ears flapping, their trunks curling under in some type of emotion, while a low whine came from many watching the deaths of their calves. “We Doomat comply with the demand of our Rizen dominants,” hooted a large elephant at the center of the herd. “May we leave to graze? Our other calves need nourishment.”

The Rizen who had killed the first calf moved sleekly out of the way of a fellow pod Hunter who stomped eagerly to the gate as another calf tried to reverse and flee back into the corral. Which it could not do thanks to the narrowness of the corral exit. The new Hunter moved into that exit alley and jumped atop the small calf, sinking its white shark-teeth into its upper neck. The sound of bone crunching was clear over the AV channel. The first Rizen looked to the Doomat elephant speaker, its body plates rippling in a sine wave that matched the movements of its red-and-black striped body.

“Depart! But raise more calves for next year’s feeding corral!”

As the herd of Doomat elephants turned around and headed for the green grasslands that filled the savannah-like landscape, a silvery ball lowered from the sky to hover above the corral and ongoing butchery of small elephant calves. It spoke over the AV channel.

“So begins the annual Offering of Doomat younglings to our Rizen colony on the eastern portion of the equatorial continent,” hooted a raspy voice. “Meanwhile, Doomat spaceships are bringing in asteroid metals for the construction of new Rizen housing in the colony. The colony, which began 300 cycles ago with just 30,000 colonists, now counts 90 million Rizen within its many Pods! Two colony ships have already been launched to stars formerly controlled by the Megurk Hunters and—”

“Shut off that vibetalk!” Jack yelled, his gut churning.

The audio portion shut off. But the blood-letting at the corral continued for anyone willing to watch. He looked up at his fellow captains. All of them looked as disturbed as he felt. He looked back to Denise, whose pale face was so white it looked as if she had a case of measles, thanks to her freckles. The young woman who had joined his ship more than a year ago as a stowaway had grown and matured greatly in the time since as they made two interstellar trips. And defeated the Unity government of Earth. But neither she, nor Jack, were able to feel calm and normal when one intelligent species treated another intelligent lifeform as easy meat for consumption by conquering predators. She caught his look and raised her dark red eyebrows. “Captain Jack?”

He licked dry lips. “Show me a sampling of the other AV channels. Especially those with Tech in them. These Doomat elephants are obviously herbivores, but the tool belts hanging from their necks say they are advanced tool users. Which they had to be in order to send off spaceships into their system.”

She gave him a brief smile. He’d said what was obvious to everyone. But everyone was also sickened by what they had seen. And, like Jack, eager to move onto something they could understand. Like AV broadcasts from the Doomat locals. “The next three strongest AV channels are going up on the front screen. With audio on, or off?”

“Off,” Jack said. “For now.”

“Going up front,” she murmured, her youthful voice sounding business-like now that they were no longer watching the Rizen lion-rhinos rip apart young calves of the Doomat species.

Jack turned around, felt the grip of his restraint straps and sat back in his Tech station seat. With a cabin porthole to his left, the screen up front and the motion-eye atop the screen, it was the place he had grown accustomed to being in. It was the site where he fulfilled the duty he had promised his grandpa he would do, just weeks before the man died in his
kamikazi
crash into a Unity frigate. In the First Belter Rebellion of 2072. Up front an image of a city appeared.

Unlike a human city, there were no high-rise towers of glass and steel. Or stone ziggurats. Instead, filling a high mesa that lay at the forking of a large river into two tributaries were thousands of white domes, large and small. The domes seemed to be partly translucent, judging by the fact the AV camera capturing the scene showed the movements of tiny elephants within some of the domes. A few spots showed clusters of silvery steel domes piled one atop the other, like pancakes stacked high but with half their shape protruding to one side of the other. Still, the stacked domes never reached higher than ten stories. Rampways connected the domes and broad walkways meandered through the ‘city’. Large flat-bed transports moved along those walkways at a slow speed, carrying groups of elephants, with no exhaust showing. Either they were solar-powered, battery-powered or moved by way of giant windup springs. Jack grinned as he recalled playing in their parents’ habdome with his sisters. They had old-style rockball cars powered by little springs that could be wound up so the cars moved along on little thruster springs at the back. Since there was too little gravity to have them move like normal ground vehicles, their toys bounced through the air like rats with spring tails. With a smile he gave up recalling childhood memories. He was an adult now, in a marriage with a lifemate and the father of a child-to-be. Before, he had fought the predator Aliens of the Hunters of the Great Dark to protect all of humanity. Now, he fought for his family to be.

The front AV image shifted to a new one. This one depicted a spaceship landing field. Located somewhere that resembled a giant inferno on the ground.

“What the fuck are they doing there?” called Max.

He waved back to his ComChief. “Denise, activate the audio. Let’s hear what the broadcast is saying.”

“Activating.”

A brief whine sounded as the SETI translator function converted Rizen hoots to Belter English. “Ships are now landing with this month’s required load of asteroid metals mined in the Rock Fields beyond this world,” hooted an announcer who sounded stuffy. Perhaps it had the Rizen version of a head cold. “Monitoring ships of the Rizen fleet report Doomat ships are also loading on fusion gas fuels from atmospheric mining of the cold air of planet Rizen, the outermost gas giant whose massive jet streams resemble the colors of our hides.” The voice paused as three ships that resembled fat bumblebees with sharp snouts slowly landed on the yellow-orange flames of fusion thrust. Their landing site was blackened rock. Branching out from the rock field were nine tracks of rails that carried railroad cars filled with shiny metallic rock. The cars were pulled by an engine with no exhaust, though its long body sparkled with what appeared to be solar panels. The cars were heading for grinding and smelting factories that resembled black cubes and exhaust towers all tossed together. Black smoke filled the sky as unroofed forges melted mineral rocks that were being crushed by open-air rock stampers. “Matriarchs of the Doomat have been reminded that the penalty for failing to meet monthly quotas is the payment of an additional 100 calves to the processing corrals on the three continents of this world. The matriarchs have promised to increase asteroid mining efforts despite the failures of vacuum suits on two dozen workers during this month’s blasting operations.” The scene shifted to one of space. On it appeared a score of golden spear-in-a-globe spaceships of the Rizen Hunters. They were moving silently through space under grav-pull drive, as shown by the gravitational lensing of starlight as it passed near their hulls. In the background shone the white globe of the Doomat moon. “Rizen Colony Fleet exercises have begun in the space between the world of Green Grass and its moon of Mother’s Milk. While some Rizen youth resist their induction into fleet duty, the vast majority of  Rizen pods have done their duty and now provide—”

“Enough of the Rizen boasting,” Jack called out. “Shut off the audio.”

“Off,” Denise said.

Blessed silence filled the Pilot Cabin even though the front screen still showed the 20 ships of the Rizen Colony Fleet moving in a lithe synchrony that resembled the sleek movement of the Rizen at the culling corrals.

“Captain Jack,” called Archibald from the back row of function seats. “That resembles a scene from Earth’s early Industrial Age. Why are the Rizen doing ground-based refining of asteroid metals? Humanity and all other Alien cultures we’ve contacted do space-based smelting by way of concentrated starlight from the home star. This way brings down waste rock that has no Tech value.”

Jack knew that. After all he had grown up in the Belt and made his first barter money flying a Hopper from rock to rock, selling solo miners self-heating food packs, air bottles, water, booze, erotic vids and suit repair parts. He gestured to Denise to shut off the AV broadcast. “Archie, the Rizen do this because they are slavers ruling over slave populations. These Doomat elephants. They don’t care how many Doomat die in mining space rock with explosives. But they do care if the local natives get too much experience in vacuum laser-mining, space habitats and coordinated fusion ship movement in space.” He grimaced at the other implications. “My guess is that when we meet one of the Doomat fusion ships up close, it will be unarmed. No lasers. No particle beams. No rail guns. Nothing that could be an offensive weapon.”

“Makes sense,” called Cassie from behind Nikola. “If I were a spy for an intruding Hunter of the Great Dark, I would report back that there is only one space-going opponent to deal with. The Rizen. These land sharks are really nasty-looking customers.” She paused. “Jack, you and Max must really hate these Rizen. After what they did to your first crewmates.”

Hate wasn’t a sufficiently strong word. Nauseating disgust felt better. “Wonder why these Doomat haven’t tried rebelling before now.”

“They likely did,” Blodwen piped up from behind Max. “Which may explain the brutality of the penalty for not meeting monthly quotas. And the fact the corral culling AV was the strongest broadcast coming from the planet. No doubt these Rizen colonists wish to emphasize to the billion or more Doomat that the Rizen
are
dominant,
are
the apex predator of this system and are ruthlessly deadly upon the least excuse.”

“All too true,” Max muttered, his tone angry and determined. “Jack and I learned this from Destanu when he informed us of the primary Rule of the Great Dark. He said ‘Only tigers travel star to star, never the sheep’. And these Doomat elephants are clearly being treated as sheep ready for the eating.” His buddy paused. “It was our first exposure to the reality that natural selection operates at the interstellar level, and that predators roam the starways.”

His sister Elaine had been watching the culling, city and mining broadcasts with clenched fists. He could see that, thanks to the skin-tight gloves of her vacsuit. She looked his way, her shoulder-length brown hair restrained by her yellow headband. Amber eyes looked into his. “Brother, thank you for saving our family, and other humans, from a fate like this!”

Jack licked his lips. Wishing he could sip a beer, instead he reached down and grabbed the water squeeze bottle. Putting it to the feeder nipple of his helmet ring, he mouthed the sip tube and sucked in cold refreshment. Two swallows left him feeling better. Physically. “Sis, yes, Destanu and his crew were just as deadly as the Rizen you saw in the corral culling vid. Fortunately, Max and I managed to collapse the meeting dome on the comet after they killed our crewmates, and then slag the nose of their ship. Which we salvaged for its grav-pull and Alcubierre drives.”

Maureen gestured an obscene Belter finger-talk sequence at the front screen’s true-light image of HD 1461, its six planets and the Sensor tracks of grav-pull and fusion ships. “So. Which Rizen do we kill first?”

Watching the AV broadcasts had been useful. Both as a reminder of his duty and of the reason why 20 Rizen ships were clustered near the Doomat home world of Green Grass. “We head for Green Grass and the space between it and its moon Mother’s Milk. Elaine, can you take a read on the coordinates of that cluster of grav-pull ships shown in your Sensor imagery? Then share them with Max? I’d like us to make an Alcubierre jump into that space and appear close enough to attack first!”

“Good enough,” Maureen said dryly, getting up to head back to her Battle Module. “But we should expect a serious fight. Even though your first battle with them did not involve the use of lasers, I suggest we be ready for lasers, neutral particle beams and thermonuke torps.” She gave a sigh as she moved toward the hatch leading to the Spine hallway. “Though if we arrive close to this fleet, we should not have to worry about automated mine fields. Would be a bother to their own fleet.”