Dark Planet (8 page)

“Maybe specialists ain’t leaders in that pissy-pansy school you came from,” he growled, “but that don’t apply in the teams. It is your rank that counts here, and that makes you fourth. You will be in charge and damned well better act like it, else Blade and the others will chew you up and spit out your heart.”

“Is that a warning or an order?”

“Both. There’s a couple of reasons you need to know this. This pod is programmed to return to the Stealth in exactly nine days, starting from today, whether any of us return with it or not. Nine days is what we have to recon the Blobs and get back. We’ll make reports to the pod’s computers every day so higher-higher gets the intel whether we get chewed up or what.”

“And the other reason is?”

“The chain of command is also programmed into the pod’s memory system. Its combat tacs keep track of the living and the dead. The pod will take off
before
the nine days are up only upon orders from the senior living team member. As long as the senior man is alive, no subordinate can even enter the pod. Understand?”

“But the senior man can take off without his subordinates?”

“Any leader who would do that is a lowdown dirty sonofabitch. If you are in charge, you will leave no one alive behind. Understand?”

“Not even Blade?”

He glared at me. That was supposed to be a joke.

“The others will also be informed of the procedure,” he said.

“So they can keep an eye on me?”

“That’s my job. If you fuck up, I’ll make sure you never have a chance to take command. Blade won’t have to do anything. Don’t even think of mind-talking to the Blobs.”

“Why would I do that, Team Sergeant, when we have such stimulating conversations among ourselves?”

As for Blade, his unblinking, indecipherable stare dogged my every movement. His hostility toward me became palpable. You didn’t have to be a Sen to feel it.

“Elf?” he said, cornering me.

“My name is Kadar San.”

“Elf, is it true that taa camps weren’t the only Indowy construction on Aldenia?”

“Don’t you know? You were there.”

“Don’t be a wise ass, elf.” He sneered at me. “This is going to be a long mission. Anything can happen.”

I sighed and said, to keep peace in the family, “It was centuries ago that the Indowy were here.”

“True, but always something remains. For example, the spawn of human whores and tailed monkey-elves, like yourself. If I were a woman, I would rather screw a dog or an ape as a Zentadon.”

“I am sure you would.”

He wasn’t listening.

“The Indowy built experimental research and development laboratories on Aldenia,” he stated. “A man could get rich if he stumbled onto some of that stuff.”

“Greed precedes the fall.”

He looked like he wanted to twist off my head.

“It is an old, old Earth expression,” I said.

Maid, who overheard, later found the opportunity to caution me. “Blade can be a dangerous man. Don’t deliberately provoke him, Kadar San.”

“It does not have to be deliberate.”

Atlas, wearing a disapproving look, snatched her out of my presence and piloted her into the ship’s bay where I saw them in heated argument. Whatever was happening on the ship was affecting everyone. I felt like I might chew off my own arm but for the Zentadon control I exercised over myself.

I targeted the planet through the viewscreen with the full force of my concentration, which was considerable, and scrubbed the atmosphere telepathically. As far as I could tell, there was simply nothing there. Except, I still experienced a feeling of menace, of …

“Evil,” Maid said over my shoulder. I gave a start. I had been so focused that I hadn’t felt her approach.

“You did not give me a penny for my thoughts,” I scolded mildly.

“But that was what you were thinking, Sergeant Kadar.”

“I thought Humans abandoned concepts of good and evil once they discovered the vastness of space and found no God living there.”

“Not all Humans.”

She watched the viewscreen with me. Lightning storms popped and erupted on the forbidding surface.

“Have you picked up something?” I asked her presently, sensing how troubled she was. “A signal?”

She frowned. She sat down next to me in front of the screen and lowered her voice.

“I don’t get anything from it except silence.” Her voice cracked with strain. “What does it mean? Our listening devices can hear the footfalls of an ant crawling across the surface of a moon. We should be able to comb something from the planet — atmospheric disturbances, electrical energies, force fields, something. We should be listening to all that lightning, if nothing else. Our gear is designed to sniff out any disturbances. Yet, it’s as though we are flying through a tunnel …”

“We are being jammed. Is that the term?”

She nodded, still focusing on the screen. I felt her shudder where her shoulder touched mine.

“You’ve surely noticed how everyone’s started to change since we went into orbit,” she said. “It’s almost like the atmosphere from Aldenia is permeating the screen into the ship, isn’t it? The feeling I get is of something dark and …” She couldn’t think of a more appropriate word. “… and evil.”

That was, I agreed, the right word for the Dark Planet.

“Sergeant Kadar, why did your people and the Indowy abandon Aldenia after you had colonized it?”

“We did not colonize it,” I corrected. “The Indowy colonized it and brought Zentadon here.”

“I stand corrected,” she snapped, then caught herself. “The Group Commander during mission briefing said something about taa camps. What was he talking about, Kadar San?”

I hesitated. The mere mention of taa frightened Humans.

“Surges of taa produced by the Zentadon endocrine system can bring about a physical and mental transformation,” I said, speaking from personal experience after the night of the attempted sabotage. “In this stage, Zentadon are capable of what you Humans call super strength and abilities.”

“I remember when I was a little girl and my great-great grandfather was more than a hundred years old,” Maid interrupted, reflecting. “He told stories about the early years of colonization and exploration. He told one of the stories as a warning whenever the children were unruly and needed straightening out. Sort of like, the boogie man will get you if you don’t behave. It was about how his great-great grandfather fought in the Revolution. He saw Zentadon soldiers wipe out one of our colonies. He described them as looking like devils with their green or purple eyes and their tails. They moved with such incredible speed that they were like flitting shadows, unable to be seen except the way you see a bird out of the corner of your eye before it disappears. They actually exploded buildings with only the collective energy of their minds. They shredded flesh off Humans and ate it. I …”

She looked pale beneath her brown skin.

“It is little wonder that Humans are suspicious of Zentadon,” I commiserated.

“The story is true?”

It was suddenly important to me that I make her understand.

“The Indowy through their technology developed means of inducing taa in Zentadon at their will and thus controlling us by it,” I said. “Zentadon are inherently peaceful people. We were captured in large numbers and interned in camps under the most horrid conditions. The camps were run like animal breeding and experimental stations. Hundreds of thousands of us died — as many as twenty million. All to satisfy the Indowy quest for super soldiers to be used to conquer the galaxy and enslave the Humans and other sentients to a cartel of madmen who ruled the Indowy at that period.”

“The camps were here, on Aldenia?”

“Hundreds of them, all over the planet, along with various war research laboratories and factories. There was one unforeseen consequence of the taa scheme, however. Taa in sufficient quantities released into our systems may produce a condition known as lintatai, which can destroy us very quickly. Lintatai may occur in two ways. A Zentadon goes into a fugue state of mind during which he will neither eat nor sleep. He will not do anything unless ordered, and then only as a zombie reaction. He burns out on the inside and slowly withers, useless to himself and everyone else until he dies.”

Maid shivered. “How awful. And the other way?”

“The Indowy wanted to build super soldiers based on the control of taa. And they did. The downside was that we literally burn up from the inside out with all that energy. Prolonged overdoses cause us to go into acute lintatai and explode from the inside, to spontaneously combust into flames.”

“Like one of the saboteurs did?”

I shot a glance at her.

“I was told about it,” she quickly explained. “Is that why the Zentadon are so comparatively few today?”

“The Indowy had to keep replacing Zentadon with fresh captives, running us through the camps by the millions. If we survived the camps, not many of us survived the taa rushes imposed upon us in combat. Soon, so few of us remained that you Humans were able to … Well, the Great Revolution succeeded. Humans have recorded it in your histories, from your point of view.”

Maid looked horrified. She stared at Aldenia with new intensity.

“It is an evil place,” she whispered. “Is that why it was abandoned.”

“It is said that the malevolent spirits of the Indowy butchers and the Zentadon who collaborated with them are trapped and isolated in the darkness of the planet. That no one who goes there survives it.”

“DRT-418 and DRT-420 did not return,” Maid pointed out, turning toward me. “But Blade went and returned several years ago.”

I shrugged.

“Do you believe there are evil spirits, Kadar San?”

“Are there not stranger things on Earth and in Heaven, to coin an old, old Earth expression?”

“I believe that in everything there are opposites,” she said. “For your right hand, there is a left. For the darkness, there is light. For every evil there is goodness.”

I nodded. “The universe is kept in balance through opposites.”

“How do you explain the Blobs? Are they somehow immune to the planet? Are they stronger than evil? They can’t be the counterbalance to it.”

“More evil than evil?” I mused.

Before we could explore the topic further, a disturbance broke out on the bridge. Atlas’ voice rose angrily.

“You damned ape!”

He sprang to his feet and rushed Gorilla, knocking the black man’s book from his hands. Gorilla charged back with a primordial roar. The two big men grappled like giants, locked together in combat. They crashed to the deck, grunting and yelling, kneeing, elbowing and gouging. Fortunately, they were unable to do much damage to each other in the confined space and in the ship’s reduced gravity field.

Captain Amalfi and little Ferret rushed to break them apart, succeeding only after Ferret had been flung into a bank of monitors and Sergeant Shiva replaced him with his greater bulk and authority.

“What the hell is the matter with the two of you?” the Captain demanded.

Atlas looked befuddled, like he was emerging from sleepwalking. His face was flushed and bleeding from minor scratches. Gorilla shook his bald head to clear it.

“I-I don’t know, Captain,” he murmured.

“Gorilla, he … he …” Atlas stammered. “Gorilla, he …
looked
at me.”

H
-Hour for insertion.

“Suck it in, DRT-bags, it’s show time,” Sergeant Shiva announced.

The crew donned pressurized space suits and helmets over our chameleon cammies and crawled on hands and knees, one at a time, through the airtight lock into the tiny shuttle pod and strapped ourselves into individual G-seats. Some of the seats were situated in front of the miniaturized control panel, where the Captain, as pilot, began switching toggles to start the undocking sequence. I heard a hydraulic whine. Panel lights began blinking.

Sergeant Shiva entered last and secured the hatch before taking his place. The chamber went dark until the interior lights came on. The area was so cramped that the taller men slumped in their seats to prevent banging their helmets against the overhead, and if we moved otherwise we barked our elbows and knees against the surrounding bulkheads. We went into OPSEC silent running. Secure commo sets plugged into our helmets provided intercom.

The craft was point-computerized for the fastest and most effective landing approach. It was designed to negotiate a low detection entry, morph into a glider configuration, dive in slow flight to the water, level out, and “control crash” into the sea where it became a submarine. All of which was computer initiated and controlled. After undocking, and until we landed in the water, passengers were mostly along for the ride, dependent upon a “pilot” constructed of microchips and electric micro energy.

Because of our unfortunate historical roots in Indowy technology, Zentadon were less comfortable with machines and artificial intelligence than Humans. I was particularly uncomfortable with it and felt my muscles tensing and taa dripping into my system as Captain Amalfi activated the cycle that would fire the pod away from the Stealth and plunge us downward toward the Dark Planet. Keepers at the orphanage, bless their Zentadon souls, always said I had the heart of a poet. Poets were cautious of things you constructed to think for you.

“This is going to get a bit hairy,” Captain Amalfi warned through the intercom. “Barf bags are built into your helmets. Listen to the bell. It tolls for thee.”

He fired the pod after a final systems and safety check. It shuddered, the lights dimmed. It shot away from the Stealth like a bullet from the muzzle of a Grav rifle. There was minimal gravity at this altitude above Aldenia and no atmosphere, resulting in little discomfort for those of us strapped into the projectile. About an hour of weightlessness followed, filled with some idle chatter but mostly with quiet as we riveted our attention upon the viewscreen.

“Piece of cake,” Atlas quipped. That was one of the grunt’s favorite lines.

The ride really began when the pod touched the edges of Aldenia’s thick atmosphere. The “pilot” flew like it was insane. That was in case the Blobs were watching. It was programmed to execute random barrel rolls and flips and to make flaky course changes in order to simulate a meteor entering the atmosphere. It tumbled, yawed and skittered first one way, then the other, slamming us against our restraints. Heat shields armored the vessel, but the temperature inside rose anyhow to the steamed-seafood level.