Rise of the Valkrethi Read online

  On a planet with no moon, the people of Hud had developed exceptional night vision, and Menon knew he could trust his sentries to keep his squad safe. As darkness fell, the rest of the men settled in for an uneasy night. Some were still awake when one of the sentries hissed urgently to the other, not long before the middle of the night.

  CHAPTER 4

  ________________

  In a few moments, every man in the squad was crouched along the seaward side of the hollow, staring in fascination at the light display out to sea. Bars of light raced past under the water, first one way then the other, each looping around the same circuit. It started offshore from the island and reached well out into the shallow sea that lay within the circle of islands.

  Then the sea turned milky white, as a great cloud of silt rose from some activity on the sea bottom. The looping bars of light redoubled their speed, and a faintly-glowing, iridescent mound rose up in the centre of the display until it was clear of the surface.

  When the circuit was one continuous and intense ring of light, a beam leaped from the middle of the mound, piercing the atmosphere of Hud. A long, dark shape passed at extraordinary speed up the beam of light, and was lost to sight. The ring lost some of its intensity, then brightened again. Three more of the dark pods were ejected from the ring in rapid succession.

  “What in the name of the Prophet is that?” whispered the squad member on Menon’s left.

  “A wagon,” said Metris, on the other side of the man.

  “You what?” said Menon in a low whisper.

  “Herd beast with a wagon,” repeated Metris. “Think about it. Menona’s mining boss contact said the Invardii were after some sort of special minerals. What are they going to do with them when they’ve found some? Send them back ‘home’, wherever ‘home’ is, same as we would.”

  Menon smiled grimly. “Herd beast with a wagon,” he repeated. “Same as we would.” He paused. “You’ve got a mind for the extraordinary, Metris, I’ll give you that.”

  The little show didn’t last for long. Once another salvo of three pods had been ejected by the ring, the lights that flashed back and forth around the circuit began to slow down.

  “Well, I guess that’s the kind of stuff the mining boss on Earth wants to know about,” whispered Menon.

  The last of the lights below them winked out.

  “Try to get some sleep,” said Menon briskly, after nothing else had happened for a while.

  “Sentries, remember to set a second watch in the middle of the night, same as we planned. We’ve still got to make it back to Shellport in one piece, and I want you all sharp. Now turn in!”

  The men tried to make themselves comfortable along the side of the hollow once again, and the stillness of the Barrens returned. A light breeze blew from the land, and pushed any sounds from the sea away from them.

  Despite this disadvantage, a sharp-eyed sentry noticed something just after the second watch had begun. The surface of the sea heaved upward a good distance offshore, boiling away from something underneath it. He got the attention of the other sentry, then turned to rouse the others.

  Menon came awake at the first light touch on his shoulder.

  “Something breaking the surface,” reported the sentry in a soft whisper. “Something huge, with a flat top. It’s got a number of, ah, legs of some sort.”

  “Now it’s stepping out onto the beach,” said the second sentry. He paused for a moment, and Menon joined him at the edge of the hollow.

  “Hell’s teeth,” said the man, “it’s halfway up the slope already, I’ve never seen anything move so fast!”

  Menon had already turned to the sleeping squad, and startled them awake with a prodigious bellow.

  “Scramble, scramble, scramble!” he yelled, as he lifted one man at his feet and pitched him over the edge of the hollow. The man rolled away into the darkness.

  The ‘scramble’ code was a scatter signal drilled again and again into the squad, and others quickly followed the first down the slope. They rolled a couple of times and then found their feet further down. From their they ran in a dogleg pattern toward the swamp at the bottom.

  Those who had not cleared the hollow were suddenly pushed to the ground by a force they could not see. The strange craft that had come out of the sea now stood over them, a many-legged contraption like one of the Descendant Pilars, with its rows of supports. Nearly half the squad still remained, helplessly pinned, too slow in their response to the scatter signal.

  Then bright light blinded them, overlaid so suddenly on their night vision. Menon closed his eyes to shut out the glare, then opened them to make the thinnest of slits between his eyelids. He saw a vast metal leg on one side of him, and realised it was a machine that had them pinned down.

  It must be a machine made by the Invardii as some sort of guard for their base in the waters below. He tried to move his arm, and succeeded in raising his elbow a little, then dropped it again under the immense strain.

  Something dropped from the shape overhead, and an orange light flared into being at one end of the hollow. Menon used all his strength to turn his head, and found himself staring at a monstrous shape built something like a man, but many times bigger. The surface of it moved unceasingly, a dull orange fire that whirled and eddied back and forth.

  The shape had recognisable arms and legs, but the head was a low, flattened dome barely higher than the shoulders. It was studded with projections that clicked and whirred and panned across the ground in front of it as if they were searching for something. Several of them locked onto Menon, as if they were deciding what sort of threat he might be.

  He made a desperate effort to get to his kit bag, which lay halfway between him and Metris at the bottom of the hollow. He succeeded in reaching his hand out and touching it. The orange shape took one huge stride and stood on his bare arm, pinning it to the ground.

  A moment of pure agony surged through Menon as the skin burned off his arm, and then mercifully the pain ceased as the nerve endings were destroyed. Another orange shape flared into being at the other end of the hollow.

  “The rod,” he called desperately to Metris, “Menona’s rod in my bag!”

  Metris understood what he was saying. Menona had presented them with a short, thick rod from Finch, the mining boss of the Earth people, just before they’d left to make their way to the Barrens.

  She’d been told by Feedic’s communication device to take a dooplehuel offshore and wait, one evening on dusk. The rod had come out of the sky attached to a cloth, and landed nearby. It had floated heavily on the water.

  Metris struggled to reach the bag, and succeeded in pulling it to him. As he freed the rod from it, the orange shape at the other end of the hollow stepped forward and went to put a foot on his chest. He rolled away, but the outlandish orange leg landed on his shoulder, and pain blazed through his muscles. His hide jerkin burned away, and his skin cooked under it.

  “Twist it,” yelled Menon. “Just grab the ends and twist one of them forward!”

  Metris pulled his damaged arm forward and took the other end of the rod. Grasping it firmly he twisted with the hand that was half under him.

  There was a soft click and the orange shapes vanished.

  In their place were two cylinders, half as long as a man, with a bulge in the middle. They were covered in strange patterns and odd markings. There was a moment’s delay, and then the force that was holding the men down vanished, and the squad members struggled to their feet. The machine over them stood still and silent.

  Metris grabbed Menon’s bag and stuffed the rod back into it.

  “Run,” said Menon breathlessly. “Head for the boats. It’s our only chance!”

  For Menon and Metris, their injuries were in a way fortunate. They were not losing blood, and they could still use their legs to run. Menon clasped the raw wound of his arm to his chest with his good arm, and made the best speed he could down the slope. The smell of his own burned flesh made him feel sick.<
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  At the bottom of the slope they had to wade through the swamp ooze again, and this was more difficult on the return journey. The squad had already cut up the best places on the journey to the island.

  Menon was half way across the ooze when he heard a distant wet thump, and the crash of scrub breaking as a powerful body bulldozed its way through the swamp. He knew what that meant.

  “Grud-nak!” he shouted. An adult, a land dwelling reptile with fully developed legs, and a big one by the sound of it. His squad had the worst luck in the whole of Hud, thought Menon desperately. It must have smelled the burnt flesh downwind.

  That’s all we are to a beast like that, he thought, meat for the taking.

  Menon and Metris struggled on, wading through the treacle-like ooze of the swamp, while the rest of the squad closed behind them in a protective line.

  The grud-nak came at the men with a rush. The squad would have preferred sharpened poles so they could keep their distance, but they had to rely on their short stabbing swords. Against the grud-nak’s armoured hide these had little effect.

  Rows of lethally sharp teeth closed on one of the swords and wrenched it away, while the squad man retreated behind the others. The beast hesitated, and when it opened its mouth again bright blood smeared the side of its mouth.

  “Cut itself on that one!” cheered one of the men. Then the grud-nak lunged forward again, and the man lost his footing in the treacherous ooze. The reptilian monster rolled over him, powerful legs churning the surface of the swamp as it lunged again, snapping at the others.

  “Keep it occupied,” yelled Metris, seeing at once that the man had two impossible choices – to be smothered by the ooze or dismembered by that massive snapping head. Grabbing a solid piece of driftwood nearby, and wincing as pain stabbed through his damaged shoulder, he struggled back toward the knot of men around the attacking beast.

  “Bait it,” he said to the man at the head of the circle, directly in front of the lunging head. This was a villager from Shellport, an old friend, who looked intently at him as he considered the strange request, and then nodded. The villager edged forward until he was ahead of the others, and drew back his sword, leaving himself open to the beast’s next attack. Sensing an opportunity, the grud-nak threw itself headlong at him, thrashing its tail in fury.

  Metris stepped in at the last moment, and the driftwood blurred in a two-handed strike. He rammed it between the beasts jaws, and the branch came to rest at the back of its mouth. The grud-nak lunged at the man who had baited it, knocking him down, but it couldn’t get its jaws around him.

  Metris threw himself forward, and hauled himself aboard its back. The creature started backing up as it tried to dislodge the sudden weight on its shoulders. The villager scrambled back onto his feet and got out of the way.

  Metris found a long, thin ear slit just forward of his right knee, and stabbed down through the slit as the grud-nak reared back. He felt it still moving, and worked his blade deeper into its brain. Running on nothing more than reflexes, the brutish killing machine churned forward several body lengths before it collapsed and lay still.

  The rest of the squad rushed forward to help the man who had been pushed down into the ooze. He was still struggling feebly when they got him on his feet, and once they had most of the muck off his face he started coughing and swearing in equal proportions.

  Menon went for a closer look at the dead beast. Metris had driven his weapon right through the massive head.

  “Do you want your sword?” said Menon, and the men looked sideways from the rescued squad member. The grud-nak lay inert in a pile of silvery-grey scrub.

  “Leave it in the damn thing,” said Metris. “Maybe other grud-nak will see it and get the message!”

  He was suddenly filled with a great tiredness.

  He was glad Menon was there, and he felt a surge of appreciation for the help from a man he considered his mentor. Being a leader had been a bit more than he had bargained for today. When you were the in charge of a squad, the men were your responsibility. That meant you did whatever it took to keep them safe. Sometimes it took more than you felt you were able to give, but you gave all you had anyway.

  The squad was very quiet on the way back to the dooplehuel.

  Menon knew something of special significance had taken place, and the squad had come together in a new way. Metris had been their leader before this, they would have assured you of that, but now they were all bound together at a deeper level. The trust among them was complete.

  CHAPTER 5

  ________________

  “The report from Aqua Regis confirms it?” said Finch, hunched over detailed graphics of the Barrens taken from space.

  “Affirmative,” said Saint George, re-running the sub-space log from Menona to make sure there was nothing he’d missed. “Menon gave us a clear description of a fusion power ring, and it has some sort of mass launcher we haven’t quite figured out yet.”

  It was interesting, thought Finch, that the Invardii still used such basic engineering concepts in their interaction with the material world. Some parts of their technology were astoundingly sophisticated – the life support systems that allowed them to hybridise between the cylinder state and the orange plasma state for instance – but they were not so advanced in other ways. It was as if they were wedded to the idea of overwhelming size and unlimited power, and couldn’t see past it.

  “Why are the Invardii mining on Aqua Regis?” he wondered out loud, and Bosun answered him from across the room.

  “Hang on a minute, might have something on that for you. The geo program is just finishing its analysis of the area.” A few moments later he was rushing the results to Finch’s computer console.

  Finch smiled to himself. It was good to have the old mining team working together again. He could even see Matsu, with Meeaniro beside him, working on computer models in the far corner. He wanted to know how their captive Invardii maintained its cylinder state, at the massive central processor in the corner of the room.

  Finch chuckled to himself. Meeaniro thought she had captured a ‘demon’ when it arrived in one of the little Mersa’s interdimensional experiments. Then the Shellport squad had seen the transition to the cylinder state themselves, when they were spying for the alliance at the Barrens.

  Slowly but surely, he thought, we’re getting to know our enemy!

  Finch looked out the window at the stark landscape of the Neptunian moon. Prometheus had been rebuilt bigger, and better, now the full weight of EarthGov, as well as the trading blocks, was behind it. But there were times he missed the old days, when life was simple and all the mining team had was themselves and one control centre, perched on the edge of the opencast mine that had preceded Prometheus here.

  “Sunken caldera,” said Bosun, pointing to the magma intrusion that bent and seamed its way from deep in Aqua Regis to a chamber just under the Barrens.

  Finch examined the 3D representation closely as it hovered in front of him.

  “Caldera, that’s a collapsed volcano, right?”

  “Yes,” said Bosun, “and they can be of considerable size. The jagged edges of a collapsed caldera are showing up here as the islands of the Barrens.”

  “That explains why the Invardii are mining there – the mineral content in the middle of it will be high. But I thought Aqua Regis didn’t have tectonic plates?” queried Finch.

  “It doesn’t,” answered Bosun. “We’re still working on that one. Part of the answer comes from a meteor impact way back in the planet’s past. It left the crust thinner, and weaker, at this point.

  “That couldn’t have created a volcanic ‘hot-spot’ like this one though, not without something else to help the process along.”

  “So the meteor threw up the ring of islands we can see?” said George, who’d come over to have a look at the 3D representation.

  “No, that came much later – normal volcanic stuff,” said Bosun. “The meteor strike was a big one, and a long time
ago. It would have blown half the surface of the planet into space – it happened at a time when the planet hadn’t cooled much.”

  His remote beeped, and more data downloaded into the file before Finch.

  “As you can see, it actually reduced the size of the planet by about eighteen percent.”

  They watched as the computer simulation showed a bright streak of light come over the horizon and plunge into an Aqua Regis without any seas, and with an atmosphere darkened by unbreathable gases.

  A shock wave travelled out around the planet from the impact, and the huge hole that had opened up closed again, spewing material into space.

  “The problem is,” said Bosun, “that all the material that was fired into space should have gathered together into a moon, but Aqua Regis doesn’t have a moon.”

  His remote beeped again, and he downloaded more data to the file in front of Finch. An analysis of the magma under the Barrens showed a high concentration of super-heavy elements.

  “That would explain it,” said Bosun, working his way through the data. “Meteor composition is often mineral rich. The impact from a meteor with such a high specific gravity would give the ejected material enough energy to reach escape velocity, so the material would escape from the pull of Aqua Regis altogether.

  “It also explains why there is molten rock still present in the mantle this late in the planet’s history. There’s enough fissionable material down there to melt the rock around it – some sort of natural radioactivity.”

  “Another reason why the Invardii would be interested in the site,” said Finch. “It must be a mining bonanza under the Barrens.”

  “Still,” he said, turning away from the 3D representation, “why are the Invardii mining planets?

  “I would have thought they were using power sources more advanced than heavy elements, and more advanced than ours. Since they don’t like living on planets, why don’t they sift what they want from the gas clouds around a good, dense supernova?”