Dark Foundations (65 page)

“How many people? Three hundred?”

“Five hundred.”

Five hundred
. Too many people.

Merral got to his feet. “God have mercy on them. You've warned them?”

“The communications around the village have failed.”

“I see,” Merral replied, calling up a wallscreen map that confirmed what he suspected. Tantaravekat was too far away from either the Western or Central Regiments for help to reach them in time. All they would have would be a handful of irregulars.

Merral remembered the vision he had been given by the envoy and shuddered.
I want to intervene
.
But there's nothing I can do for them . . . except pray.

Merral had a hospital ship placed on standby and requested a reconnaissance satellite overflight at dawn. He then ordered one of the fast scout vessels with a five-person specialist disaster team that the Natural Hazard Management Department used for reconnaissance to be made ready and requested a dozen well-armed volunteers from the Central Regiment to be sent to the airport.

He then waited and prayed.

Exactly at seven, Lezaroth appeared on the screen. His message was terse and delivered without any apparent emotion. “Operations at Tantaravekat are complete. You may visit the village from ten until midday local time. The village is under the control of Krallen units who are under orders not to harm you unless you are foolish enough to try and attack them. The village will be obliterated at 1300 hours. We advise you to be at least thirty kilometers away by then. There is no need to take any reserve or medical vessel; you will find no one living.”

As Merral and Lloyd were rotorcrafted from the roof of the Planetary Administration building to the airport, Merral had a glimpse of the growing defenses. Everywhere he looked there was activity. High dust columns rose up around the city as colossal machines chiseled great trenches and pushed earth and rock into high embankments. Buildings were being shuttered and the roads were clogged with vehicles transporting people and supplies.

At the airport, he explained the situation to the grim-faced men and women. “We must be prepared for the worst we can imagine . . . and then some more.”

23

M
erral and the team did not immediately land at Tantaravekat but instead circled over it at an altitude of three thousand meters. It was a cluster of a hundred white-painted brick houses, dusty palm trees, and walled fields in the middle of a vast monotonous and dusty plain of pale salt pans and brown sand fields. They took images and then launched a surveillance drone that flew over at treetop level.

The images the drone sent back shocked them all.

It wasn't just that there were bodies lying in the streets. After all, death was no stranger to the Made Worlds and disaster teams trained for it. It was two facts: first, the bodies had been torn into fragments; second, perched calmly on the walls and roofs were the creatures responsible.

Merral looked at the ashen, stunned faces surrounding him.
Lead from the front
. “Everyone, I'm going in anyway—”

“With me,” Lloyd interrupted quietly.

“With Sergeant Enomoto then. It seems there's no one living, but we need to be sure. I want only soldiers. Disaster team, if we need you, I'll call.” He felt certain that the team wouldn't be required. “I want to go, because I think we need witnesses. Someday there may be a chance for justice for Tantaravekat and I want to be able to say that we saw what happened.”

There were nods of agreement and one by one the soldiers said, “Count me in,” “And me,” and “Me too.”

At five past ten they landed at the edge of Tantaravekat Village. Merral, clutching a rifle, leaped out of the ship. Lloyd and the other soldiers followed. Just beyond the landing zone they took up positions with their weapons at the ready.

Merral soon saw the Krallen. A pair sat atop a palm tree, staring at the party from behind the fronds. They were bigger than he remembered, roughly the size of a small calf. “Battlefield Krallen,” Azeras had said. They showed no hostility, fear, or even curiosity, yet Merral senses a deep and strong malevolence.

A gust of hot, dusty air struck Merral and he smelled the heavy, sickly odor of death. He forced himself not to recoil and stood there, blinking in the hot bright light, looking and listening.

There were few sounds: the faint
flap-flap
of curtains from the nearest house, the banging of a window shutter, the buzzing of flies, and behind them all, the uncanny high whistling and hoots of the Krallen.

“Okay. Let's do the job!” Merral snapped. “Safety catches on. Stick together. Follow me!”

They walked into the village past the incomplete defenses. Merral stared at the abandoned ditch and rampart system with unease.
Even had it been finished
,
would it have done anything to defend this village?

As they approached the street that led into the heart of the village, Krallen could be seen perched along the roofs and on balconies like monstrous, deformed birds of prey, their whistles and quavering cries to each other showing pride and hatred.

A single Krallen strolled—there was no other word for its action—into the center of the street no more than a dozen paces ahead of them and turned to face them. Its eyes had a dull red fiery gleam that Merral had never seen on the Krallen at Fallambet.

Merral, suddenly aware that his palms were sweaty against his gun, half-turned to Lloyd who stood at his shoulder. “Say something to encourage me, Sergeant.”

“How about ‘even though I walk through the dark valley of death, I will fear nothing evil'?”

“‘For you are with me, your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.' That will do. Here goes.”

Merral walked forward until he was barely three paces away from the creature and could see every detail, from the tiles of the body to the opposing claws.

For a long, appalling second, they stared at each other. Then, with a careless flick of the tail, the creature sauntered away.

The street behind was full of bodies.

Trying to avert his eyes for as long as possible, Merral watched the Krallen above. They tilted their gray heads, which somehow evoked memories of both dogs and reptiles, and stared back with red eyes. Some opened their stained jaws, some seem to flex muscles, and still others—in a dreadful parody of animal activity—seemed to groom themselves and examine their glinting claws. In their posture, Merral sensed a proud, almost mocking, indifference to the dreadful handiwork on the streets.

He steeled himself to what he faced and walked on, carefully weaving his way past the human remains and avoiding the dried black rivulets in doorways and on the deep-set windows.

Amid the horror, Merral was surprised to find that although he seethed with grief, revulsion, and anger, a part of his mind remained analytical. He found that recognition a slight but precious comfort. After all, this was not just a horrid place; it was also a dangerous one.

He began to give orders and was amazed to hear the firmness in his voice. “Check that building. . . . Image that. . . . Get shots of those Krallen.” Giving orders allowed him to fractionally distance himself from the unspeakable scenes around him.

Within minutes, it was apparent that their presence was a formality; none of the inhabitants of Tantaravekat had survived. The appalling damage that the Krallen had done to the human beings was highlighted by the restraint they had shown to property. Apart from the universal bloodstains, the worst damage was that doors and shutters had been forced open.

Merral and Lloyd stayed in the central square as the soldiers fanned out in twos to check the few remaining streets. They stood in the shade of a teetering palm tree, beating the bloated flies away, aware that above them, black winged vultures drifted in slow circles.

“Sir,” Lloyd whispered, his voice quavering, “you reckon these things go to hell?”

“No, Sergeant. But their makers do.”

Lloyd wiped sweat from his face. “You know, sir, I'd like to really help them on their way.”

As they waited, it came to Merral that the whole thing was a ghastly hallucination: the heat, the smell, the sight of the Krallen, and the dead. He fought against it, trying to make his mind stay in analytical mode, and forced himself to look around for any evidence of a defense. He found little. It looked as if the handful of irregulars here had not been able to do anything to protect the village. The implications were troubling.

The soldiers soon returned and Merral sensed that beneath their disgust, anger welled up. Their terse reports were the same: there were no survivors.

Just as he was about to order their departure, a tawny cat crept from under an overturned table and began to run across the square. Almost faster than the eye could follow, two Krallen leaped from a roof with surprising agility, and chased after the cat with effortless speed. One overtook it. The other came up behind.

The cat skidded to a halt, spun round in the dust, arched its back, and hissed loudly.

Merral looked away as the hiss was cut short by a soft, wet sound.

Lloyd gave a savage cry.

Merral struggled to avoid tears. “Okay, men. Let's go,” he ordered and, without looking back, they left the village.

In ten minutes they were flying south, landing forty kilometers away on a ridge of tumbled rocks in the shelter of a high lava cliff.

The subdued and silent soldiers took up positions on the crest of the ridge and gazed with pale faces north across the shimmering plain of salt pans and sand fields to the hazy dot on the skyline that was Tantaravekat.

As they waited, Merral found himself glancing up as if in the silver sky he could see the
Triumph of Sarata
maneuvering into place.

At 1300 hours precisely, a flash of gray-silver light scythed down through the sky and struck the village. Angry ragged sheets of black smoke with fiery edges burst upward and outward, coalescing into a growing mass of turbulent cloud that seemed to soar toward the stratosphere.

Merral heard gasps around him as the ghastly billows raced over the plain toward them.

Over a minute later, they heard a long, drawn-out bass rumble that shook the air and the ground. Another minute or so and the dust-laden edge of the dark cloud was whipping and tearing at their faces.

As they flew back to Isterrane, Merral realized that beyond all the numbing and visceral horror of the day lay a terrible reality: they were completely defenseless before the Dominion.