Starfist: Hangfire (20 page)

On further signal the Fighters slithered forward until they could see into the encampment of the headless monstrosities. Those few among the Fighters who thought of such matters saw the camp as a nesting ground, such as the migratory birds of Home might use—except for one disquieting detail. The nesting grounds of birds were raucous places, filled from dawn to dark with cries and caws, strobing with incessant movement. These creatures moved seldom, and were almost sedate about it when they did.

Their vocalisms were restrained, and only one in a group spoke at a time. Most of them were gathered in one place under the dripping trees; they seemed to be listening to a smaller group in their midst, and those in that group spoke one at a time.

The six Leaders in the group observed; they ignored the social structure displayed by the creatures.

They looked at the implements that might be used as weapons, where they were scattered in the camp, which creatures held them, which creatures that were not armed were in position to take up weapons.

The Leaders needed to know those things so when the order to attack came, they could command their Fighters to kill the most dangerous of the creatures first.

There was a Master with the group. A very junior Master on a minor vermin-removal mission, but a Master nonetheless. Decisions and changes in orders were his responsibility. He observed the social structure displayed by the centauroids. He saw the tools and understood which were weapons and which were not. He thought deeply about such things. The way the centauroids attended each other, their evident communication, their use of tools—at least some of which were made rather than found—indicated to him that they had some form of intelligence. They were beasts, of course, but intelligent beasts. Intelligent beasts could be trained to labor. The Master thought about the amount of work to be accomplished to establish the staging base on that unpleasant world, the number of workers available, and the time constraints under which they worked. He came to a decision. He immediately dismissed the thought of checking with the Senior Master; the Senior Master couldn't see the things he saw. If the Senior Master disliked his idea afterward, the Junior Master would die. If the Senior Master did like it, honors would be heaped on the Junior Master. He believed his idea was one that would gain him honors. He spoke into his communicator and instructed the Leaders to have the Fighters take prisoners. Eradicate the nesting ground, he instructed. Kill all armed centauroids, kill all who are bigger than people, and kill the smallest ones. But take as many of the others prisoner as possible. Kill all who resist or attempt to escape.

The Leaders acknowledged the new command and awaited the order to attack. When the Master saw the central group of centauroids begin to break up, he ordered the attack.

All around the centauroid camp the Leaders jumped to their feet and screamed for their Fighters to attack. The Fighters rose, aimed their weapons, and sprayed killing juices into the masses of monsters.

As the Leaders called out the changed orders the Fighters adjusted their aim accordingly.

The centauroids panicked.

The leader and the council of elders were among the first to die horribly as thick, greenish fluid ate deep holes in their flesh.

Only the chief hunter survived the initial volley as he had broken from the council group to organize scouts an instant before the firing began. When the attack began, the chief hunter ran in unpredictable jigs and jags, changing direction and speed every step or two, as though dodging the spikes of a dangerous prey animal. As he ran he called out to the hunters, his full-volume honking carried easily over the panicked hooting of the females and young. A few hunters honked replies to his orders, too few. As he paused in his irregular movement to look for those who didn't call back, streams from three weapons struck him.

The chief hunter's honking turned shrill...

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Partly concealed by the other females who stood nervously around her, she huddled miserably in a corner of the barn. Spatters of rain splashed through the slit they'd made in the wall behind the huddling one. She needed the rain—they all needed rain; their skins were dry and cracked from being kept many hours each day under a roof that blocked the rain. The huddling female needed the rain more than the others; her birthing time had come.

With a sudden gasp, she struggled to a crouch. Three females helped her up. Gingerly, she moved her posterior over the pile of leaf fragments the females had sneaked into the barn despite the watchful guards. One female folded her mid and hindlimbs to lower her torso until her primary eyestalks were level with the birther's channel.

The birther squeezed and grunted. Fluid gushed from her channel and two tiny balls plopped onto the pile of wet leaf fragments. She staggered from the effort and release, but the others held her up and the one by her posterior kept her from sitting or stepping on her newborns. They aided her in moving around until she could fold her mid and hindlimbs under herself next to the two balls that were opening up on the pile of leaf fragments into miniature, incompletely formed centauroids. Each stood on all six wobbly limbs.

The miniatures turned about uncertainly, their eyebuds poking out, searching for their dam. Shuffling, she slid a midlimb from under herself and nudged the leaves. Uttering feeble squeaks, the newborns scrabbled toward the disturbance. They found her midlimb and climbed onto it. Grasping with all their limbs, they struggled along its length, up the front of her torso to the sac slit beneath her mouth, and slipped inside.

The new mother sighed deeply, lowered her torso, and rolled onto her side. The small movements of the newborns inside the sac soothed her. She crooned softly and the irregular movements slowly matched the rhythm of her crooning.

"You should have left them," said a female who hadn't aided in the birthing.

The new mother paid no attention; it was her first birthing, and the feel of her babes in her sac obliterated everything from without.

"She should not have," said the one who had protected the newborns when they first fell from the birth channel.

"The monsters will see and they will kill us all."

The helper looked at the mother. She could easily spot the slight bulge on her chest where the sac held the newborns, but she doubted the monsters would notice. She certainly had trouble telling one monster from another, though they instantly recognized each other.

"They won't see," she said with certainty born of hope.

The monsters worked them hard, thought them ideal pack-animals, loaded them with burdens that weighed more than the centauroids did. Kicked them and beat them with clubs when they fell beneath the unbearable weight. The labor weakened them. The first of them to die had been beaten to death on their first full day of labor. That death taught them to struggle back to their feet as fast as they could when they fell instead of trying to release their burdens.

Each day as the sky lightened into dawn, they were fed. The food wasn't the diet of fish, leaves, and tubers to which they were accustomed. Instead they were given a gruel with bits of fish, fragments of leaf, and strange, pulpy, white seeds of a kind they'd never seen before. The pulpy seeds, not in a gruel, seemed to be the major diet of the monsters, though they ate many fish and strange leaves as well. In the evening, as the sky was darkening to night, they were fed again. The inadequate diet weakened them even more.

Then one day more creatures were brought in; frightened, bruised, and wailing. All were females of breeding age; no elders, no immature young. No males.

When the new group arrived, the monsters stopped the six surviving females and herded the newcomers, about thirty of them, to them. Gabbling unintelligibly, the monsters got across what they wanted—the six were to teach the newcomers how to be slaves.

How could they do that? They didn't know how to put the burdens on themselves; the monsters always loaded them and fastened the straps that kept the burdens on their backs. And they never knew when they were loaded from the flying nest which of the other nests they were to bear their loads to until a monster lashed them in the right direction.

"Follow us," the oldest of the six called out. She staggered as she turned, but she didn't fall. She led the way to the huge, strange nest to which they were carrying their burdens.

The newcomers were frightened, confused, but seeing that others of their kind were there and seemed to know what to do, they stopped wailing and fell in line behind the six. Soon, they were sure, their questions would be answered. Then the burdens were lifted from the six and the newcomers were filled with horror at sight of their oozing backs. They shrilled and cried and some of them tried to run.

The monsters beat one of them to death as an example to the others. Then the heavily laden females followed the six to the flying nest, almost collapsing under their burdens. In line they moved along to another nest, each stumbling at least once. Each received blows, but struggled back to their feet. No more were killed that first day. Most adapted and became too dulled by exhaustion and weakness to care.

The new mother was one of the third batch to be brought in. She gave birth little more than a week after her arrival. Her strength hadn't yet ebbed too low, and she thought she could manage. At each meal she allowed some of her gruel to dribble down from her mouth to the sac slit where her newborns lapped it up. She did her best to retain food in her mouth for her babes between her own meals, but often all she could give them was saliva she was barely able to work up. One of the two died several days after its birth, and, for a while it seemed that the other would survive. But it lasted only six days. Deprived of her babies, the young mother refused to rise for work the next morning. The monsters beat her to death. But the monsters didn't find the newborns; the other females had hidden the tiny corpses away.

The Senior Master growled, "You were right. They make very good slaves. It is too bad they are so much weaker than their broad backs would suggest."

The Junior Master bowed low to the Senior, uncertain whether to be pleased that the Senior Master thought his idea was good, or dishonored because the creatures were weaker than they looked. "Thank you, Master," he growled back. "You are right, Master."

The two Masters stood in the lee of a porch roof, watching the centauroids struggle under their burdens.

"If we had enough of them they would do nearly as much work as our tractors and we could unload the mothership in half the time."

"Yes, Master." The Junior bowed again.

The senior considered the slaves for a moment longer, then asked, "These are all females?"

"Yes, Master."

"The males are larger and stronger?"

"They are larger, Master. I believe they are stronger."

"Go out again. Bring back males this time."

"The males are all armed, Master."

"Kill any you must. Any you can disarm, bring back."

"Yes, Master." The Junior Master bowed a third time and backed away.

He lost two Fighters in the raid, but they brought back fifty male centauroids. The Senior Master had to laugh—the males were easier to break to the yoke than the females. And they were stronger. After additional raids, on which they lost only one more Fighter, they had more than two hundred male slaves.

Construction and supplying of the staging base speeded up. The work was finished well ahead of schedule. The surviving beasts, all thirty-eight, were released.

Thoroughly disoriented as well as weakened, the freed centauroids swam across the river and wandered into the forest. Most of them survived the swim.

Two Junior Leaders watched the centauroids leaving, growled at each other, then went to the Senior Master with a proposal. The Senior Master barked out a laugh at their proposal and gave his permission for them to proceed. The two Junior Leaders stripped down to loincloths and took up swords. They followed the centauroids across the river and began hunting them. One hour later they returned and deposited the eyestalks they'd collected. One brought back twenty-one pair, the other seventeen.

The Senior Master peered at the eyestalks. "Did you kill them all?" he asked.

The Junior Leaders bowed.

"I think so, Master," said one.

"It is difficult to cut the heads off beasts that have no heads," the other replied.

The Senior Master laughed.

So did everyone else within hearing.

Within the scheduled time, more Masters arrived, some senior even to the Senior Master in charge of the staging base. These Masters brought Leaders and Fighters with them. First they came in the thousands and then in the tens of thousands. When more than a hundred thousand had arrived, the operation was ready to begin. The most Senior Master ordered a ship to ferry the first wave to the target planet, a mere three light-years away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was raining—again—on Thursday as the three Marines sat in the dining room at the Royal Frogmore, pecking away disconsolately at their breakfast. While none would admit to it, they were all very nervous as the hour of contact neared.

"Goddamn rain," Claypoole muttered, "I don't see why anybody'd want to waste his money on this waterlogged hole. The skinks would love it."

Pasquin cringed at the mention of skinks and looked hard at Claypoole.

"I just don't give a damn," Claypoole responded, twirling a piece of beefsteak on the end of his fork.

"And they can have this damned chow too." He threw his fork down. "Reindeer steaks are better than this cow shit stuff anyway."

"Well, all this rain is depressing," Dean offered. "But Rock, don't forget, you met Katie here. The place can't be all bad then, can it?"

Claypoole brightened at the mention of Katie. "Yeah! Hey! I wanna take you guys some place this afternoon."

"That library you been talking about?" Pasquin asked.

"Yeah. Let's go over after lunch. Hey, Raoul, maybe you can pick up a girl there!"