"You're correct. I would not be comfortable. But neither am I going to the settlement." Without hurry, he reached back into the pouch slung against his abdomen. "Nor are you."
Cullen Karasi was not a man easily startled. He had spent too much time on other worlds, working and surviving in alien environments, to be surprised by much of anything. The gun that had appeared in the thranx exoarcheologist's right truhand surprised him. No, he corrected himself. It astonished him.
He was too dumbfounded to be frightened. "So that is what happens when a thranx loses its mind. Very interesting. My first observation is that your people go about slipping into the pool of insanity more peacefully than do mine."
"I am not psychotic. I was awake all last night, and though tired, I assure you I am in complete command of my mental and physical faculties. Would, sevvakk, that it were otherwise."
Placing his hands on his hips and tilting his head slightly to one side, the unruffled scientist regarded his weapon-wielding caller. "What do you intend to do with that firearm? It is a firearm, I presume, and not an ingredient in some eccentric thranx ritual of which I am unaware?"
A steady thrumming noise was now audible off to the east. It grew steadily louder, heralding its approach with a deep, mechanical hum. Gazing past his deranged visitant, Cullen tried to see out the partially open doorway to the distant landing site.
"That's our transportation arriving. Go or stay, I don't care, but make up your mind. And put down that silly gun. I know everyone carries something when they travel outside camp boundaries to protect themselves in the unlikely but possible event of attack by one of the local inimical life-forms, but it hardly becomes your academic standing."
"I'm staying." Mandibles closed, and a soft whistle emerged from between flinty insectoid jaws. "So are you. Everyone is staying."
Cullen inhaled deeply. "You realize that after this, there's no way I can in good conscience recommend extending your permit to work here?"
"Of course I understand. If our situations were reversed, I should act in exactly the same fashion." The thrum of heavy transports now permeated the walls and floor of the prefabricated structure. "The point is, as you humans are fond of saying, moot." He repeated the word, savoring it. "Moot." With a small c!k on the end, it could almost be a word in Low Thranx. "It is moot because of the pending AAnn attack on your camp here."
Cullen's pitying aloofness quickly gave ground to sudden anxiety. "What kind of nonsense are you talking? What AAnn attack? The AAnn are here to help us travel to Comabraeth. Why on Earth or any other world of your choosing would they want to attack an inoffensive, nonstrategic scientific site?"
Pilwondepat waved the gun with disarming indifference as to his surroundings. "Why indeed? I am certain that very question is going to puzzle many who will try to rationalize what is going to happen here. It would be interesting to be able to examine some of the explanations. Unfortunately, that will in all likelihood not be possible."
The senior exoarcheologist's gaze narrowed sharply. "What do you mean, 'whatis going to happen here'? What do you know?" Dawning realization began to transform his expression. Color drained from his face. "Good God, Pilwondepat - what have you done?"
The thranx gestured a first-degree expression of regret. It was heartfelt, and very lissomely executed. "I believe too strongly in the importance of this discovery to allow it to be turned over to the AAnn. I am convinced, without having to hear your nascent theory, that something on this world holds the key to matters of very great consequence. Too consequential to leave to the discretion of the scaled ones. Casting about for a means with which to ensure the continuation of the human presence on Comagrave and the possible expulsion of the AAnn, I find myself caught in a noteworthy irony: To secure both, I must make use of the techniques of the latter."
The explosion that punctuated the thranx scientist's somewhat cryptic explanation caused the shelter to shudder on its foundation. Cullen had to catch himself on a nearby cabinet to keep from stumbling as the earth heaved beneath him. Standing firm and foursquare on his quartet of trulegs, Pilwondepat experienced no such unsteadiness.
"That was satisfyingly loud," he murmured softly. "More substantial than I had hoped."
"What? What are you jabbering about?"
"The first AAnn cargo carrier attempting to set down at the camp's landing site has been fired upon by the site's occupants. A shocking and unprovoked attack. The AAnn will react instinctively. Among the AAnn, this takes the form not of query or discussion, but of returning fire immediately. Having been attacked in turn, your people will struggle as best they can to defend themselves. They will fail, of course." He spoke so casually, so diffidently, that he might have been relating a minor point of relic dating taken from a recent learned journal.
"The AAnn are used to and expect conflict. Your staff here is drawn from scholars and students, not soldiers. They will all be killed. The only chance the AAnn will have to explain away the frightful misadventure depends on there being no human survivors to contradict whatever feeble story they will strive to contrive." He gestured again with the gun, making Cullen flinch. "It doesn't matter. Whatever fiction they fabricate will not be believed by your people."
"How . . . ?" Cullen was struggling desperately to understand what was happening around him. The first explosion had been followed by a second of lesser magnitude, then a third. Shouts and screams in abundance could be heard echoing throughout the camp. "How can you be so sure of that? If we all die . . ."
"I programmed my own communications unit to transmit an alert via the camp's automatic relay. It contains a full explanation of the treacherous assault by the AAnn, which they have carried out under cover of evacuating innocent personnel to Comabraeth."
"What if they intercept it?" By now Cullen was too dazed to question anything but the abject reality he was experiencing.
"They can't intercept. The alert was programmed to send as soon as the AAnn transports were detected approaching. It has already gone out."
"Those explosions - can they really be firing on us?" Once more, the exoarcheologist tried to see out the door. Cries of confusion and despair filled the air outside with a general disharmony of desperation.
Pilwondepat's sensitive antennae had twisted about to focus directly behind him. "Not at first. They are now. I told you I did not sleep last night. The last two detonations you heard were simple excavation charges, creatively positioned and designed to go off subsequent to the first. That one required a good deal more effort to get right. Shaped disinterring charges are not intended to be retrofitted with proximity programming. It took several time-parts to modify the instrumentation to where I was reasonably certain it would operate properly.
"The first vehicle attempting to set down at the landing site activated the sensor attached to the charge. Though not as suitable as military munitions, I suspect that the ensuing blast destroyed or damaged the alighting AAnn cargo carrier and killed or seriously injured many if not all of its occupants. Triillc, I certainly hope so."
Wide-eyed now, but no longer with disbelief, Cullen started to push past his former colleague. "You are insane. You'd have everyone murdered, people you've come to know, people who have learned to trust and even like you, just because you want the AAnn off this world!"
"And humans to remain on it. Yes, that's the intention. There are matters of significance at stake here, Cullen."
"Well, it won't work." The furious supervisor was almost to the doorway. "There's still time to put a stop to this madness. I'm going to find Riimadu. Together, we'll get on the camp communicator and issue a statement on all frequencies explaining what has happened. With Riimadu translating, I'm sure we can make the rest of the AAnn understand."
"No, you won't." The muzzle of the gun in Pilwondepat's truhand shifted slightly to the right.
Cullen glared pityingly back at the ludicrous insectoid. "What are you going to do, Pilwondepat? Shoot me in the back?" He turned to exit the shelter.
br /> "I could not do that. It goes against everything my hive stands for," the sorrowful scientist confessed. "But an AAnn would."
The very tiny shell made a very loud noise and a very large hole in the middle of the stunned supervisor's dorsal side, blowing a majority of his internal organs out through his flaring ribs. Pilwondepat did not have the opportunity to appraise the exoarcheologist's final expression because the biped toppled forward onto his front, facedown on the packed earth. No doubt his countenance was as fully convulsed as the wonderfully expressive human face could manage.
"Primitive things, explosives." Pilwondepat ambled past the wide splotch of spreading redness as he exited the shelter. "They have the useful virtue of being entirely non#8211;species specific. As long as no identifying residue is left behind, it is credible that any idiot intelligence can assume responsibility for them going boom." In Low Thranx, this concluding sentiment emerged as a long, drawn-out whistle marked by a single intermediary sharp click.
"The AAnn are not the only sentients capable of cunning, Cullen. I did like you. Very much. You forgot that for my kind, the safety and security of the hive comes first. Even if it is not our hive, but one that is of potential importance to us. Say for example,sr!iik, the human hive." Dolefully, he ululated a final, forlorn whistle of farewell. "You might be willing to relinquish Comagrave to the care of the AAnn. We will not, I will not, the Great Hive will not let you. Not even at the cost of all our lives." Clutching the tiny but lethal firearm in both truhands, he inclined forward to place his foothands on the ground. Supported now by all six lower limbs, he exited the edifice and surveyed the rising panic outside. He did not look back at the body lying on the ground behind him. Unfortunately, the proper expiration formalities could not be observed on behalf of his late colleague. There was simply no time for lengthy lamentations. He regretted that, but knew he had no choice.
Not when there was an efficacious chaos in need of stoking.
For once, he was hardly noticed. Flames and smoke rose from the direction of the landing site. In crashing, the AAnn cargo carrier had evidently sparked fires among the assembled baggage and modest temporary buildings. Intended to advance the cause of science, the explosives he had spent the night modifying and setting into position had apparently performed better than expected in the service of conspiracy.
Nearby, the crashed and burning transport's two sister craft hovered ten meters off the ground. A few desultory bursts of gunfire issued from one, while the other was quiet. That would not do. Firing his weapon, he raced through the encampment yelling at the top of his voice. It was weak compared to the deeper intonations of humans. Clicks and whistles and stridulating would have reached much farther, but were incomprehensible to the bewildered mammals stumbling all around him.
"Defend yourselves! Shoot back - don't let them kill you all!" All the long hours practicing the difficult vowel sounds, the endless evenings spent listening to human conversation, now paid off in what ironically was likely to prove to be an elaborate and unrecognized epitaph. He could even manage the correct inflections, as was shown by the alacrity with which the humans he encountered responded to his shouts of alarm.
A number of those emerging from the camp's shelters were doing as he hoped without having to be prompted. As more and more small arms were brought into play, their combined firepower began to inflict real damage on the nearer of the two AAnn transports. Fired upon for what must have seemed to them to be no reason, the AAnn finally responded in traditional fashion. One after another, every camp structure was obliterated, though without the usual reptilian efficiency. They were still confused.
Then someone aboard one of the surviving transports, probably a senior military advisor, realized that the abrupt and unanticipated confrontation had passed a political point of no return. Humans had been slain, in numbers too large to explain away as the result of an accident. Having plunged too deeply into slaughter, the visitors now had no choice, as Pilwondepat had surmised, but to eliminate any possibility of contradiction in the hopes that a suitable postmortem explanation could be concocted by their military psych specialists.
The much-vaunted AAnn martial methodology was applied to the scientific camp. Moving off in different directions both to make a more difficult target for the humans below and to enhance their operative efficiency, the two transports positioned themselves to flank the camp and trap the remaining humans between their combined fire. Pilwondepat agonized as he watched one dazed but defiant human after another go down beneath the heavier firepower of the two cargo carriers. It was doubly hard for him to look on knowing that those who were sacrificing themselves for a greater cause had no inkling that they were doing so.
He continued to take cover where possible and fire his own weapon. The handgun could not bring down a vehicle as substantial as a cargo carrier, but with luck he might penetrate its lateral edge and kill an AAnn or two. Sprinting on all six legs from a large rounded boulder toward the still-standing communal eating building, he found himself suddenly face-to-face with one figure that was neither trying to flee nor fighting back. He slowed.
Slitted eyes flicked sideways in his direction, and the silky voice that had been hissing harshly into a handheld communicator turned on him. "You. Fssst! You have ssomething to do with thiss, thiss outrageouss happening. Thiss iss no accident, inssect!"
"We are all of us accidents in the sight of the cosmos, scaled one," Pilwondepat declared humbly as he raised his gun and shot the surprised AAnn exoarcheologist square between his glaring, accusing eyes. Peaceable soul that he was, the action gave Pilwondepat more satisfaction than anything else he had done that day. He did not wait for the body to hit the ground, but instead rushed toward the still-standing structure to further incite those inside.
Battles that begin in confusion often end the same way. So it was with the massacre at the camp. Without knowing exactly what had happened, the AAnn found themselves presiding over a scene of complete devastation. One of their own craft had been destroyed, and many of its crew killed or seriously injured. A second transport was severely damaged but still capable of flight, albeit at a greatly reduced speed. The deceitful humans had perished to the last, males and females alike. So had the Empire's sole representative in the camp, who had he survived might have been able to shed some light on what was becoming an increasingly disturbing and impenetrable conundrum. There was also one dead bug, to whom the AAnn paid no attention.
Precisely why this had all taken place, in the space of less than an hour, no one on the surviving AAnn craft could say. Hasty tight-beam communications were exchanged with the AAnn consulate in Comabraeth. A frantic exchange of appalled questions and choleric recriminations followed. Presented with a horrific fait accompli, the ranking AAnn determined to contrive an elaborate explanation for the tragedy that had devastated the human scientific outpost. This involved the rapidly spreading disease to which many of the humans had previously succumbed, consequent nervous disorders, a few cases of isolated madness and paranoia, followed by something akin to mass hysteria.
Intruding with the best of intentions onto this psychochaos, the neighborly AAnn had found many humans already dead at the hands of their fellows. Coming under relentless and inexplicable attack, they had been forced to defend themselves with no more than a minimal amount of firepower. Meanwhile, the crazed humans had continued to go on about killing one another, much to the anguish of the observing AAnn, who were powerless to stop the disease-induced madness.
An improbable story, it was the best the AAnn tacticians could devise while operating under the press of time. It was not, however, inconceivable. Lending support to the elaborate fabrication was the self-evident fact that there was no reason, no reason whatsoever, for the AAnn to attack and annihilate a peaceful, harmless scientific campsite. In the absence of motive, it was hard to see how the humans could accuse the AAnn of anything more than a serious but not malevolent lapse in judgment.
Therefore, Vaarbayel CCVT, sen
ior consul for the Empire on Comagrave, was feeling hopeful if not completely confident as she was admitted to the office of Malor Narzaltan. The old human was disgustingly wrinkled and shamelessly exhibited an unrepentant mane of white keratin that spilled down the back of his head and neck. His eyes were small, sharp, blue, and seemed to take in tiny bits of airborne debris the way a magnet attracts iron filings. Vaarbayel tried to look at him without staring. Her tail switched lazily back and forth behind her, a sign of patience.
"You requessted that I appear before you. I assume thiss iss not an informal vissit."
"It never is with your kind, is it?" Narzaltan was standing, not sitting, behind his desk. It was a simple artifact, as were the remainder of the complementary furnishings that filled the office. As an outpost world, Comagrave made do with the hand-me-downs and leftovers of government.
She chose to ignore the query, which insofar as she could judge carried with it some small suspicion of sarcasm. "Then everything will be recorded by mysself as well, sso that there can be in the future no missundersstandings as to what wass ssaid or disscussed."
"No," the human administrator agreed quietly, "we certainly wouldn't want there to be any misunderstandings. Not like the one that led to yesterday's tragedy near the Mountain of the Mourners." Aged though they were, those tiny blue eyes seemed lit from within. "I was hoping you could shed some light on the matter."
"Having recently been given the opportunity to fully perusse the official report on the distressing and tragic incident, I assure you I can do precissely that." She proceeded to give the AAnn version of the "grim misadventure," concluding that the eventual devastation was the result of terrible conditions on the ground and consequent grave miscommunication between the humans at the site and the AAnn who had been sent to ferry them back to the capital. This was followed by a formal apology - even though, given the circumstances, one was technically not required - and a conjoined offer to pay reparations. Within reason, of course.