Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. (25 page)

“And what point
is that, Master Sergeant?” asked the Major.

“Probably
nearing the deepest area of this ocean,” said Kama, shrugging his shoulders. 
“I think there are some other variables involved than just pressure, but that’s
probably getting close to it.”

“I want to find
its lair,” growled Jensen, pointing at the plot.  “I want this thing dead.”

“What if it’s
intelligent, ma’am?” asked Zaya.

Jensen froze in
her seat.  There was no indication that this thing was intelligent.  And she
had no desire to find that evidence.  She was a Constable Officer, and it was
her duty to protect the citizens of the Empire.  But by the laws of the Empire,
intelligent life was considered sacred.  Which didn’t mean that an individual
from an intelligent species couldn’t be removed for the good of society.  But
genocide of intelligent species was forbidden, and if this creature turned out
to be of intelligent, they could not destroy the species, no matter its threat
to the citizens of the Empire.

“We have no data
consistent with intelligence,” said Kama, shaking his head.  “Every reaction we
observed was that of a predatory animal going after prey, then fleeing when it
was rebuffed and injured.”

“Unless we have
evidence otherwise, we will treat this thing as an animal,” said Jensen,
locking the Warrant Officer in place with her eyes.  “We will do everything in
our power to destroy it, and to make this planet safe.  Understood.”

“Yes, ma’am,”
replied Zaya, turning back to look at the forward viewer that was showing what
was ahead.

“It’s definitely
going down,” said Kama, turning his attention back to tracking their target. 
“Change in elevation, one kilometer a minute.”

“Are we ready to
fire?”

“Yes, ma’am,”
replied the Master Sergeant.  “Prime, locked and loaded.  Awaiting your
command.”

*     *     *

The creature was
aware of the thing following it.  It had thought that whatever it was would be
easy prey, just like the other new things it had found on awakening from its
long hibernation.  Instead, it had found that this thing had
teeth
, and
had come away from the encounter wounded.  Not badly.  In fact, not more than
superficially.  But any injury was to be avoided if possible, because it never
knew when that wound might be enough to incapacitate or kill.

The creature
thought of itself as a
Gatherer.
  It gathered both the basic elements
and life energy of the creatures it fed upon, which was anything that was not
itself.  It was careful to not strip the planet of all life during its periods
of activity, consuming only about ninety percent of all life forms, leaving the
rest to repopulate.  Then it slept for a millennia or more in the sheltered
deep of the world, arising again to feed.  Some forms went extinct due to its
predation, new species arose.  It was not important in the scheme of things. 
It was only important that there continued to be life on this world that it
could prey on, building its reserves, spawning new versions of itself, until
they were once again ready to spread.  Each cycle, they ate a greater
percentage of the life. In a few more cycles they would eat the planet clean,
and then use the energy to leave, looking for greener pastures.

The
Gatherer
propelled itself through the water by grabbing free electrons from the ocean
ahead and accelerating it through the mass of its body, a sort of ion drive
that gave it a much greater turn of speed that any of the life forms that used
purely mechanical means.  It would eventually use the same method to leave this
world, then use its own mass to propel itself across interstellar distances. 
It brought nutrients and other compounds into its body by the normal method of
engulfing and internal transport, but could also use quantum teleportation to
supply the inner regions of its body with much needed energy.  And it could
sense movement through sea, air or space for great distances through ripples in
space/time itself, the method it was using to track the thing that had hurt it.

The new arrivals
were like nothing its species had ever encountered.  Its own memory was long,
since it was essentially a single celled organism that reproduced by fission,
and therefore was immortal.  It could remember when it’s primordial seed had
fallen from the sky, one of thousands that had started from its home cluster, a
small dwarf galaxy tens of millions of light years from the world it was now
located.  All life had been consumed in that mass of twenty million stars,
including its point of origin.  Including those who had been responsible for
its creation.   The surviving
Gatherers
had all started off for separate
destinations, all as enormous life forms hundreds kilometers or more across. 
It knew not the fate of the others, and doubted that more than a few had made
it to fertile ground, since all would have been in the same state as itself
when they reached a star system, that of a small mass incapable of going to
another star without building up its mass and energy.  Without a living world,
most would be doomed to eternal hibernation in systems devoid of life.  It
might be the only one of its kind with a hope of spreading.  With multiple
copies of itself able to move from this star to nearby systems, where they
would be able to move on if they didn’t find what they needed, their spread in
this Galaxy was almost guaranteed.

But with these
creatures, which had obviously arrived from another star system, meaning they
had interstellar travel, all bets were off.  They could stop the
Gatherers
before
they could move on.  At first they had seemed as helpless as any of the natural
species of the planet.  More advanced technologically, but still outclasses in
most respects.  Until this new thing had come, which had the ability to hurt
it.  And once they knew they could hurt it, they would come up with a means to
kill it.

It reached
seventy kilometers under the waves, the deepest part of this section of the
ocean floor.  A couple of kilometers ahead was the entrance to its lair,
leading down another ten kilometers, to the point where water started
transforming into Ice II.   It had reached the entrance to the lair and was
about to head down when it detected two smaller objects leaving the thing, both
heading in its direction at a high rate of speed for the liquid environment. 
It didn’t know what they were, but was sure that they were not intended to
benefit it or its kind.  It established a quantum connection with the other
members of its species and sent out the warning, then continued to send through
the secure instantaneous pathway as the object came in.

*     *     *

“Fire,” shouted
Jensen as the creature stopped its forward motion, then started to drop toward
a five kilometer wide opening that led down to further depths.  The twin
weapons came rushing out of their tubes, exiting the submarine at two hundred
kilometers an hour.  As soon as they were free they released their bubble
sheathes and sped off, accelerating at twenty gravities, adding almost point
two kilometers a second to their velocity.  In six seconds they were traveling
at over a kilometer a second, the maximum Jensen intended, allowing her sub to
get out of the danger zone before they struck.  In less than thirty seconds
they were at the target, which was swiftly disappearing into the opening.

The submarine
went to full rise the moment the torps were away, gaining a hundred meters a
second while it veered off to put some horizontal distance between itself and
the weapons.  She had risen three kilometers verticle, while boosting away for
four kilometers horizontal.

“Brace for
impact,” shouted Kama as the torps reached their target.  They detonated in a
brilliant flare, each releasing ten megatons of explosive power, building up a
crushing wave of pressure at the depth while the blast wave traversed upward at
supersonic speed.

The wave struck
the sub, increasing hull pressure by several times that imparted by the depth
it was at.  The sub was made to withstand that short term pressure, but the
turbulence still rocked it and its crew back and forth.  All were in their
armor, either the suits worn for excursions, or the battle rigs meant to
protect the crew while inside the vessel.  The suits were all locked into place
in seats or cubbies, but the motion still threw the crew around in the limited
space of their armor.  Padding prevented much movement, and the most that would
come of the turbulence was bumps and bruises.

“What’s the
status of the target?” shouted Jensen, staring at the plot that now showed nothing
but the bottom.

“Unable to
determine,” said Kama, playing with the gain controls on his board.  “The blast
has stirred up millions of tons of bottom mud.  I recommend sending a remote
down to take a look.”

“Go ahead,”
ordered the Major.  They had a quartet of the remotely piloted vehicles aboard,
and chances were they would get this one back if the torpedoes had destroyed
the creature.  If not, then they at least would know it was still alive.

The submarine
dropped the two meter long remote, Kama taking control and guiding it
downward.   Little showed up on the sonar, the ocean reverberating from the
nuclear blasts less than a minute in the past.   They were getting some return
on the lidar, which was only affected a bit by the swirling water.  The return
showed a clear picture of the bottom, and a somewhat blurry image of the
opening.  The rock edges of the opening were showing crumbling, while mud from
the bottom continued to slide in.

“I’m like to
probe that opening,” said Kama, maneuvering the remote over the hole.

“Go ahead.  But
be ready to back it out if you run into anything.”

Kama nodded and
moved the remote forward, entering the hole at the very center.  It was too
silted up to get a visual, a state that might last for days.  The infrared
sensors were just about useless as well with all of the heat swirling through
the water and coming off the cooling rocks.

“Radar image
firming up,” announced the Master Sergeant.  “Sonar is still useless.  I have
something ahead, moving.”

“So, it’s still
alive,” said Jensen, glaring at the screen showing the radar plot.  “Launch
another torp.  Maneuver it in slowly, so we can get it deep into that opening.”

Kama backed the
remote out while he launched another torpedo, leaving the sub with only three
more in its magazine.  It took several minutes to move it down, while the
remote moved ten kilometers up, constantly observing the hole.  It would still
be at risk there, but the Major wanted to see what happened, or as much of it
as there was to see.

At the moment
the torpedo got to its desired placement something started coming out of the
hole, looking like a jelly suspended in the water.

*     *     *

The
Gatherer
could
feel the waves of energy bouncing off of it from above.  Light energy, radio
waves, sound.  The explosion that had occurred minutes before had been enough
to hurt it, severely.  It thought if it had been out in the open it would have
been destroyed.  As it was, it had lost about a quarter of its mass.  It had
been a battle to reconstitute that much of its membrane before it lost even
more mass.

The others of
its kind had been made aware of what had happened.  They now knew that the
newcomers to the planet were dangerous, possibly deadly to the
Gatherer’s
kind. 
Since all of them were the same creature, separated physically but one in all
other respects, a consensus had been reached in an instant.  They would attack
the newcomers, destroy them and all of their works.  It was possible that more
would show up in the future.  When was unknown, but it would have to be
risked.  Either they would come too late, or they would not be the hunters of
the newcomers such as were trying to kill it now.  If there were more hunters,
and they came soon, it might be the end.  If they came months later, the
Gatherers
could harvest all the organics and life energy of this world and leave.  More
planets, more
Gatherers
, until they reached the mass where no other life
form could threaten them.  Then this Galaxy would be theirs.

It could feel
the device the hunters had sent down to its lair, using similar energies to
those it could itself use to see the world around it.  But the device backed
off at a high acceleration, and the creature could sense the danger heading its
way.  With a thought it started cycling electrons through its body,
accelerating like an ion space drive through the water.  It had just reached
some of its further parts out of the lair when that which it sensed came.  It
could feel the power of the weapon building, then it flared as the hydrogen
within fused, converting into a miniature sun under the water.  The heat and
radiation struck, and the
Gatherer
could feel the outer layers of its
body fragment, while the blast wave pushed it back into the lair.  The blast
pushed it deep while over half of its mass dissolved into basic molecules under
the assault.

As what was left
of the creature fell into the ten kilometer deep abyss, the crumbling rock and
mud fell around it, until it was trapped under kilometers of debris.  While
still alive, it was trapped, without the organic molecules needed to produce
enough acid to eat its way through.  It didn’t possess enough mass to burn its
way through with energy.  Unless one of its kind freed it, it would remain here
forever.

The minds of the
other
Gatherers
came over the entangled link, aware of the plight of
their sibling, unable to waste the time on one so injured.  In fourteen other
lairs across the deeps they rose, orienting themselves, then heading off toward
the shallows.  Their species was going to war, and it would be them or the
newcomers.