Blighted Star (27 page)

“Diagnostic
show something very curious. I show you.” Another alteration of the controls
and Athena’s trace showed not only her name and salient details, but also
another line of code underneath. Raoul could not make any sense of it, he did
have the feeling that he had seen something like it before.

“What
is
that?”

“Is
code for equipment. Look, these have same.”  Orlov was indicating the
traces attached to the farmbots still toiling quietly in the area around the
abandoned settlements of Crescent Waters and Heart Lake. Raoul was mystified.
Why would Athena have a code? he and the Russian looked at each other.

“What
does it mean?” The question escaped Raoul’s lips. He was getting a really nasty
feeling about that snow job they’d been trying to pull on him.

“I’m
now thinking “Why is this? Is Senior Administrator a robot? I run another
check. I get Cassini to send out general systems status report. All autonomous
mechanisms on planet, from probe to mining machine to farmbot have to reply
whether they are okay or not so good. This happens.”

From
Athena’s trace a stream of data came in. there were lines and lines of
information, none of which meant anything to Raoul except one line, flashing
repeatedly it said; “System Failure. Offline. Resetting”

<><><> 

Raoul
looked at the assembled troops, scrutinising each face in turn. one or two had
some inkling of what he was about to say and met his gaze with coolness, but in
each case they looked away first. Nonetheless, Raoul made note of Jones,
Hernandez and Peters as possible further sources of trouble, the others looked
too tired and too scared to argue.

“Authority
has broken down here. Anyone see it different?” Jones moved uncomfortably,
Peters and Hernandez exchanged glances but neither of them said anything.
“We’re the authority now. You and me, boys. The civilians had their turn and
they got half of themselves killed. We are going to make sure none of them gets
themselves killed from now on.”

Raoul
had been a private fresh from training when he had been in his first real
fight. A group of third generation settlers on a fetid jungle world had broken
away from the planetary authorities and had set off on their own into the
jungle. That wasn’t exactly fine, but there was little that could be done about
what was in the end, their choice. The group however had become increasingly
cultish in their behaviour, and when reports of child sacrifice had started to
come in, investigation in force was deemed to be the only answer. The feeling
was that the mission would be a good one on which to break in new troops, what
with the rebel faction being lightly armed and poorly led.

The
jungle stank. From the trees which towered overhead, with their trunks
ascending high into the gloom, a constant rain of tiny droplets fell, and most
of the troops felt more comfortable in gas-tight condition within their suits,
even though this cut down on the senses they could bring to bear. Even at
twenty-five Raoul had seen the peril of divorcing himself from his surroundings
in this way, and had drifted on through the drizzle with his face open to the
elements, feeling the gritty drops rolling down his cheeks and hearing the
weird cries of alien life scuttling through the trees, most of which was
analogous to insects, though grown to a far larger scale in the oxygen rich
atmosphere.

It
was him who first sensed the ambush, and gave the warning in time to save many
of his fellow soldiers. What alerted him was the sudden silence. The insectoids
were all around them, chirping, squeaking and buzzing one moment, the next they
had gone and the column of troops floated on through the gloom A.G. backpacks
keeping their dangling boots a few feet from the deep leaf litter. The others,
even the trooper on point, were oblivious to the change, but somehow Raoul just
knew it was bad, and he raised his fist, willing his A.G. to neutral and
sinking to the ground. After a moment, the troops behind him did the same.
Those ahead drifted on until suddenly from the canopy above a torrent of
flailing tentacles poured down, snatching people from left and right. In
seconds twelve men and women were taken by the giant tree-octopus leaving only
trails of blood on the trunks and branches. The immense creature blended back
into the canopy in the face of blistering fire from the surviving thirty
troops, its very skin mimicking the texture of the trees it travelled through.

The
other soldiers were terrified by the incident, but Raoul had felt exhilarated.
He had met his first live fire engagement and had not only survived but had
proved himself as a warrior. He could sense that the creature would not return,
it had been testing the humans, and would have found them too formidable a
prey. It had reacted with cowardice when they had fought back and had fled.
Raoul could not understand how the others, particularly the Captain, could not
perceive this. The panic in those around him filled him with contempt, as did
their lack of vision about their real enemy. He knew that out there in the
trees the rebels would have detected the fire and would have pinpointed their
position. Would they attack? The next few hours would determine the calibre of
enemy they faced. With night coming the rebels would either seize what cover
and psychological advantage that darkness would give them, or if they didn’t
they would concede defeat.

The
night wore on, and despite the jumpiness of the sentries, they were left in
peace. In the small hours he realised with total clarity that they would not
face serious opposition from the rebels, and the next day, this turned out to
be so.

They
rose up out of the jungle, gliding across the face of a red sandstone cliff,
rent with clefts caused by the numerous outpouring torrents, which were
feathering away into mist as they dropped toward the treetops. As the soldiers
drifted closer to the edge of the plateau, they came near a tree whose roots
overhung the edge like the tresses of a gigantic female Deity. Amongst the
twining roots were dozens of small white boulders which glistened in the water
which coursed through and over them. As they got closer, the men realised that
what they were looking at were the skulls of children. As they looked harder,
unable to break away their gaze, they saw that the roots also held several more
recent rotting severed heads whose eyeless sockets were turned out to face the
dawn coming up over the jungle. Someone must have clambered down and placed the
heads one by one into gaps in the roots.

They
grouped into attack formation, then crested the edge of the plateau and were
met with a hail of rocks. They replied with strong fire which decimated the
enemy ranks. It was only as they enemy turned to run that they realised that
their attackers were juveniles; that the adults were hiding elsewhere, and that
they had just killed ten kids.

In
amongst the bodies were five injured, mostly with limbs shot away, one hopeless
case who had a clean hole the size of a fist through her stomach and spine. Raoul
looked down upon her with a detached curiosity over the back of the medic. He
felt nothing as he looked into the eyes of the dying girl, and saw nothing
reflected there; no hatred, no fear, only a faint shock and above all, a
recognition of something  elemental, which decayed into stillness.

They
left the scene of the skirmish. A.G.’s switched to minimum, just enough to
knock ten kilos off the weight of the packs they were carrying. They slogged
along a footpath to a large village where they were met with vacant stares from
the people who lined the path on both sides. This time there were no missiles
thrown at them. They secured the village and searched every hut, there were no
signs of children’s bodies; later analysis of the excrement of the villagers
would confirm the initial fears. All had partaken of the feast. There were a
surprising number of other children running round, all healthy, and with fresh,
open, beguiling faces.

The
village was the largest on the plateau, which was itself about thirty kilometres
wide and stood like an island out of the sea of forest a hundred metres below.
When they went to the other villages they found the same situation: scores of
happy kids running round, hostility in the eyes of the adults, but no hand
raised against them. Yet each village had a shrine of skulls. In one a head so
fresh that the eyes still glistened: the child must have died within
twenty-four hours of their patrol to that village, long after they had arrived
on the plateau. The villagers had come perilously close to being massacred by
the troops, and had the six man patrol been made up of different individuals,
that was probably what would have happened. But two of the men disliked each
other, and Raoul was new and so an unknown quantity. The team could not trust
there would be silence within its own ranks and the fear of discovery and
punishment overcame their desire for revenge. In the end faecal matter was
collected and traced through D.N.A. back to each of the villagers who dropped
it. The whole village was once again involved, and the villagers’ crap was full
of their own children.

What
had caused the strange cult to arise was not clear. The jungle at the base of
the plateau was full of game and edible vegetation which the people collected.
The notion had somehow taken hold that the child sacrifices appeased the forest
itself. That the flesh of the children nourished and strengthened the whole
clan. Crucially that only happened if everyone ate the flesh, and any objectors
were dealt with early on. The children were not gone anyway; the forest
received the digested flesh, the souls stayed within the minds of the
villagers, who truly believed that the children were immortal, playing behind
the eyes of the clan as long as the clan existed.

The
platoon settled down for six months. The planetary authorities sent in law
enforcement officials and began inconclusive trials in which the cult members
kept to a strict code of silence. The clan’s children were dispersed, many off
the planet entirely. A permanent security presence was established  to
prevent further atrocities. In the end, three individuals were identified as
the main organisers, two women and one man, and they were the first to be
re-educated.  Punishment was not considered to be an appropriate response.

Raoul
had been profoundly affected by the whole experience. A contempt for civilian
authorities grew in him, though he was aware that such views were anathema to
most people, even those in the military. More importantly he realised certain
truths about himself: deep in his soul he craved to be once more in that moment
that only violent action brings, when each second calls for the correct
response and the penalty for the wrong response is personal extinction. Able to
read danger signals so clearly in the heat of combat, he had no gift for the
subtleties of peace time at all. He manoeuvred constantly to be assigned to the
rare trouble spots around the Diaspora. In the long years of peace, when no
trouble was to be had, he created it where he was. This was noted by his
superiors and was what kept such a gifted soldier at such low rank. In the end
he had learned to keep down his urges, to sublimate them into the pursuit of
extreme sports, in particular the various near combat games and sports that the
human systems had to offer. At times his activities blurred the distinction
between what was and what wasn’t legal. In his relationships he found himself
drawn as if magnetically to extreme women. His posting on the present mission
was in some ways a punishment for his last amorous indiscretion, with a female
superior (though it was couched in terms which presented it as an opportunity
to re-evaluate his life). Either way, he knew that he had pissed off some
serious people and that it was time to take any assignment which could put a
few light years between him and the trouble he’d stirred up.

Leverage
had been used to get him onto the mission to Saunders; his name had been put to
the top of the pile of prospective candidates, while the full history of his clashes
with authority had been down played and his prowess in the field had been
emphasised. The Agency had bought it, seeing the vast number of worlds he had
travelled to, and no doubt seeing in him a maverick counterpoint to Jackson and
his adherence to procedures.

Raoul
felt now the strangeness of being in control. All these years of successful
soldiering he had, he realised, been carrying out the orders of others.
Sometimes he had not liked those orders, but they had always been there. The
times of crisis had come when he had been at rest: that was when he had gone
seeking trouble. He supposed that made him immature or something, needing
guidance, but that was what a lifetime in the services did for you.

The
situation as he saw it now was one of the absence of any designated authority.
There was no way he was about to take orders from an Engineer or a Doctor. At
the end of the day, he had more combat experience. And if they didn’t like it,
he had the guns as well. Raoul wondered briefly if he was up to the challenge,
then drove the thought far down to the back of his mind. He would just have to
be.

The
shuttle was dropping down towards them from the pale blue sky. As it settled in
the grass he and his men slogged forward. Raoul could feel the Rum wearing off
and let the others get ahead, he put a hand up to adjust his mask and slipped a
tablet through a gap he forced with his fingers between the gel and his
stubbled cheek. By the time he reached the shuttle the drug was driving back
all traces of tiredness and he felt sharp and alert.