Alien Alliance (50 page)

The surface to air missiles in the cities,
originally taken down for the city’s defence, were now perceived as
a potential threat. Lijfomid ordered them locked up too, to protect
his ships. That morning, the disarmament had been completed. Again,
perfect anticipation on Helkmid’s part. And the Keulfyd had done
all this to protect themselves…maybe from themselves.

They were on red alert anyway. Most of their
attention was on the other spaceships. That was where they expected
an attack to come from. Lijfomid sat down. He couldn’t think
straight. He had been through battles and many of these takeover
forces, including one or two that had turned out badly. A mining
asteroid had proved a disaster. They had ended up having to destroy
it. It had been well armed. And the gunners had been very good.
Shockingly good. Better than their professionals. That was one of
the problems one forgot about. People fighting for their lives
tended to get desperate. They took chances, they behaved heroically
and they took huge risks. Sometimes, like the Niseyen, they got
downright petty and decided to take the attackers with them. He
hated self destructs. They were so unnatural. And so terrifying. He
had nightmares about them.

Most of these actions were against small
targets: individual buildings, the very occasional bank if they
needed capital, the occasional civil war. But this was the worst.
It was not knowing what was going on. Not knowing who was doing
this. No visible enemy. Not knowing where the next attack was
coming from. Or when. No targets to aim at.

*

The Cats were not there to see the
disarmament. They had pulled back when they realised the Keulfyd
knew they were under attack. Their orders from Mathew were clear;
don’t get caught. They thought this order unnecessary. The foolish
Aliens would not realise they were spies; and damn good ones Mathew
had said. They doubted the stupid Aliens would pay them any
attention other than to kill them. Still, that was more likely now
with cowardly, trigger happy idiots. But they all liked Mathew’s
attitude. He didn’t want them to risk their lives and he was
insistent they must not get caught. He told them their Intel was
making all the difference. Thanks to the Cats, and the city maps in
the computers, they knew which areas of the city were occupied,
what Races were there and where they were, where the troops
congregated, where the armoury was, where the Relog sentries were,
where the big restaurant used as ‘the mess hall’ was, where the
officers mess was, where the apartments used as barracks were and
where the officers slept.

Some organising military genius among the
Keulfyd had placed the armoury and the Relog’s quarters, on the
opposite side of three of the four cities. The Relogs had not
commented to the Keulfyd but they had commented on this
unbelievable cock-up amongst themselves. The problem was that the
Keulfyd had not expected any organised or effective opposition. So
they had not really prepared for it. They had gotten complacent.
The Cats even knew where the stills were hidden… Alcohol was well
known among them. It occurred naturally in the forests but the Cats
had found out how to encourage it. And the necessity to dilute it.
Actually, they liked these Terrans. They held the Keulfyd in total
contempt.

*

In all the cities, the children, and some of
the adults, continued firing, almost silent, deadly, desperately.
In the medical centres in the cities, the toll of dead and injured
continued to mount but now at an accelerated rate. There was
frantic communication with the ships. Isjidakawi and Lijfomid were
both trying to calculate how serious this latest outbreak was.

“It’s acting like a neurotoxin. All agree.
But it can be lethal. The numbers keep climbing. It seems to be
patchy. I don’t know why. It’s like groups get it together.”

“How? What are the diseases?” Lijfomid was
getting frantic. He was looking at the numbers. This was
disastrous. He checked the latest numbers. The Keulfyd also
couldn’t pronounce the Ridianit city names so had simply numbered
the cities. The cities occupied by the Keulfyd were numbers 37, 43,
49 and 72.

Lijfomid read that City 37 had had 240
People alive that morning. Only 18 in total had died as of
yesterday, but a colossal 140 were too unwell to work. That
morning, 82 had been well, or recovering, or well enough to work.
The problem was, most of them were occupied with simply looking
after the sick. This put them in a vulnerable position to get sick
themselves. Which they were doing. Every few minutes, that number
of well People was going down. And the number of sick was rising.
And this fresh illness was killing many of those sick. Dead.
Lijfomid was shocked. The only helpful factor was the lack of
panic. Not only discipline held them together. Keulfyd medical
science was second only to the Okme. Their people kept expecting
them to solve this and produce the cure. Only the very senior staff
knew all the details and knew just how encompassing and hopeless
this was. They were very close to being overwhelmed.

City 49 had had some of their personnel so
sick they were up on their ship. They were badly understaffed. Of
the 202 that awoke that morning, only 38 were well enough to work.
That was until these latest deaths. Now, the number was reducing.
And almost all the well or not very sick were looking after the
sick. Yesterday, they had run out of the medical staff and assigned
others to help. Most of the sick were well enough to look after
themselves but within a day or so that would change as their
conditions worsened.

Lijfomid had planned to send a full shift of
45 to relieve them but of those 45, 12 were already ill but had
felt well enough to go. That was last night. Now, they were
baulking. All of the Force knew what was happening this morning.
You couldn’t keep it a secret. What could he do?

City 43 had had 208 People a scant few days
ago. The diseases had devastated this city. There had been 115 dead
so far and 49 incapacitated by illness and too sick to work. Many
were not expected to recover for some time. Lijfomid had been
considering what to do with this city. He couldn’t reinforce it as
his troops refused to go there. They could count. They didn’t like
the odds. That was a major problem with Mercenaries. They didn’t
have to obey orders like these. This wasn’t a war. He could have
shot them for refusing orders if it had been a war. Mercenaries had
the right to refuse any order they didn’t like. And they hadn’t
liked that order. He could dock their pay. He could refuse to pay
them at all. He suspected they didn’t care about their pay. How
right he was. What could he do? Leave the People there and
quarantine them? That was what Isjidakawi had told him to do.

The Mercenaries and others were getting into
little groups and trying to decide what to do. The security cameras
had revealed all this. Several of Lijfomid’s officers were worried
about the possibility of a mutiny and a takeover of this ship.
Lijfomid didn’t like that idea. He had invested heavily in this
ship. He owned one nineteenth of it. That was a great deal of
wealth. This little skirmish and ones like it created enormous
wealth. But they could be a little risky.

City 72 had been looking better with 285
staff on the ground yesterday. Only 14 had died there. Only 14. How
was he going to explain all this to his financial backers? Their
dependents still had to be paid plus the death bonus. Lijfomid
pulled his mind back on task. How many People were fit? He counted.
There were 74. That couldn’t be right! He checked. It was. But that
meant 211 were sick or delegated to look after the sick. He moaned.
This was a nightmare, he thought. He should be lounging back with
all the work done not back at work and shockingly sick. Not only
was he going to get zero profit from this but he was stuck with the
costs to which there would now be added huge penalties. And as for
his reputation, he shuddered to think. He would be a laughing stock
and this might be the end of these little jobs that he enjoyed so
much. He determinedly, deliberately and obstinately did not
consider the possibility that he might not survive. He made a habit
of surviving. It was a good habit. He was very good at it! He
brought his mind back to the job. This was so awful he had trouble
concentrating.

Actually, it was worse. The blow gunners
were working steadily. They had hundreds of pellets each. A fair
amount of People were wandering about. The well, the mildly ill,
and the recovering. Of those, many had gotten within range of
someone with a blowgun. And of those, all but three had been hit.
Many had been hit several times. One Yakkidimux had been hit five
times. It didn’t even make it to the medics.

City 49 had had the usual component of 26
Relog sentries. Of these 26, 12 worked the day shift and 14 worked
the night shift. The whole 12 had split up and patrolled around the
city while the night shift were eating their meal. This was not how
they normally did it but even the Relogs were getting jumpy. They
could see no enemy, nothing that could be causing this, nothing
different, nothing out of place, no visible enemy! Eight of the
Relogs got hit by one or more pellets. Half an hour later, all
eight were very sick and one was near death. The other Relogs were
very jumpy and were out doing extra patrols too nervous to sit in
their quarters. Under the circumstances, this was unwise.

Also unwise in present circumstances was the
advice given by the doctors to People to get outside away from the
sicknesses, many of which were rather contagious. There was a
problem with this advice, or rather many little airborne problems.
They were not exactly contagious. But they were lethal.

And Lijfomid as the Force Commander, the
part owner of one of the Flying Fortresses, the great planner,
Isjidakawi as Chief Medical Officer, who had anticipated only
traumatic injuries, and Tyrid, the captain conferred yet again. In
a monumental effort of forward thinking, Isjidakawi had organized
all the medical staff on all seven of the spaceships into small
groups. Their assignment was to diagnose this latest illness. He
had one group looking at food, one checking the fluid (which was
seventeen main beverages), one group was to analyse the air, one
was to study the sick, one was to take samples all through the
buildings, one was to go outside doing the same and another group
was doing the autopsies while the last group was studying the
autopsy samples. With eight groups studying all eight likely
contamination sources, surely one group would find something? All
were to be in Hazmat suits.

A message came that some of the sick were
complaining about having been stung by insects. This latter message
was given to the group designated to look for samples outside. But
although they were prepared to do the work, and did see the
necessity, and realized the haste needed, the groups designated to
actually go down to the cities were not keen. They were not in a
hurry either.

Tyrid’s focus was on keeping his ship
functioning. He was fighting a losing battle. He knew that. He was
no longer worrying about the war. His total focus was on his ship.
Desperate, he had broken tradition and contacted the other captains
only to discover, as the others had told him, that things were just
as bad. There was no help from that quarter.

While Isjidakawi’s focus was on the latest
disease, Lijfomid was in despair over his mission as the death toll
mounted and he tried to keep track of the situation. But it was
changing so rapidly. None of the news was good. Then he noticed
something. He got on the communicator to Isjidakawi.

“I am looking at the latest figures of this
newest illness. All who become ill are dying within half an hour of
turning up in the medical centres. And most are dying sooner than
that. Check. It seems to be 100% fatal.”

Isjidakawi checked all the cities and all
the ships medical facilities. He reported back.

“There are confirmed reports of deaths only
in the cities, from this new outbreak. I have had them all check
thoroughly. It is on the planet. All with this new set of symptoms
are dying. You are right. None have lived longer than an hour. Most
are dying well within 30 minutes of reporting sick. We do not know
how long before that that they were infected or poisoned or
whatever. The reported cases on the ships were false. Hysteria or
panic or something else wrong. I don’t think it is a disease. I
know of nothing that fits this clinical picture and neither does
the computer but it is still checking. It has to be a toxin or
poison, probably a neurotoxin. And we are now asking everyone if
they remember being bitten or stung by an insect or something.
Almost all confirm this. But not all.

“There were several stinging or biting
insects on this planet. They were reported as being exterminated by
the Ridianit. Some were nasty but I didn’t hear of anything this
nasty.” He shook his head, trying to concentrate. He felt so ill
and tired. “But because they were supposedly wiped out, I can find
no descriptions. I have sent some People down to access the
Ridianit computers but progress may be slow as we will have to get
past the passwords and access codes and then use the Translators to
try to find references. And because the Ridianit are all dead we
cannot ask them.” He paused, thinking. “I wonder if some insect has
survived and quietly reached plague proportions. It has the whole
niche to itself. No competition. Some insects only sting or bite at
certain times in their life cycle. They may not have got them all.
Maybe some exotic insects got past Biosecurity. I will order them
to make this another priority. Among all the others. I will report
back in another hour.”

*

It was nearly two hours into the attack
before they were discovered. Donny had been concentrating on a
Yakkidimux, which looked vaguely like a huge cockroach with fat
legs and fat round feet, wearing black flowing clothes. Fascinated,
he missed the other one coming up on his right. It saw something or
heard something and came over. Frantically, he emptied and reloaded
and hit it with a red ball. It jumped as it got hit from another
direction as well and looked away. Donny hit it with three more
balls in quick succession. It keeled over and crashed down beside
Donny. Its eyes were open. Donny watched it die. Other Aliens saw
but did not approach it. He wondered if they thought it might be
infectious. After several minutes, Donny restarted firing with the
blue balls. He was badly shaking and in tears. He was still
accurate enough.