Mech

Three

The Parent spent the days before planetfall analyzing incoming data from the passive sensors and planning her strategy. Studying the planet with enhanced optics, she decided to invade the larger of the two continents. The majority of the aliens were concentrated near the southern pole, indicating that the high temperature of the surface was generally not to their liking. This helped her decisions in designing the genetic make-up of her offspring.

Breaking out the feeding tubes, she stimulated her ovaries and prepared her birthing chambers for use. In less than a day, she would internally hatch and then birth several larvae. Using the ship’s precious supply of protoplasm judiciously, the larvae would grow to adult offspring by the time the invasion began.

Laying back in a bath of simmering mud and earth salts, the Parent felt her body quake with excitement. The combination of the hormonal stimulation of the conception process and the mud bath was most pleasurable. Ovulation after so long was a real treat. It would be good to have offspring about again.

In this state of near-bliss, with her ovaries working and her glands producing a steady stream of delicious secretions, she recalled the long war with the Tulk. At first the Tulk, an ancient and powerful race of fading glory, had fallen easily to the hot aggression of the young Imperium. They were a shy race of philosophers, seemingly evolved beyond the crude machinations of warfare. They still retained vast wisdom from their past, however, and cleverly used other beings to fight for them. Eventually the tide had turned and despite all their early victories the Imperium had been driven back.

The seedships were part of the last effort of the dying Imperium to perpetuate itself. Sent out into the unknown to start new colonies at the end of the losing war with the Tulk, the seedships had slipped quietly through the interstellar void for millennia, dropping into any inhabitable system. Sadly, she was the only Parent in this system, possibly the only Parent of her kind currently alive and active anywhere. She had to assume that the future of her race had been left to her alone.

With intense interest, the Parent studied the datastream coming in from her long-range optics. It appeared that the enemy was quite well entrenched on the hot water-world. Within hours, she had located all the major spaceports open to local system traffic and identified the largest one at the southern pole where the huge ship orbited.

Ah, the ship! What a fantastic vessel she was. Her incredible size could only mean she was built for interstellar travel. The ship was a great blot that must have shadowed a significant portion of the gleaming watery surface a thousand miles below her. The Parent considered the capture and control of the ship to be one of her primary strategic goals. What was more incredible than her size, suitable for transporting hundreds of thousands of offspring, was her apparent lack of weaponry. In a way, this was a sad note on the disintegration of the Imperium. Surely, if the Skaintz Imperium had still been a viable military force in the region then no such ship would be without escort. The Parent’s dim hopes of support from her own kind were all but extinguished by this one logical conclusion.

But not all the data was bad, not by any means. For one thing there was no sign that her presence was suspected. Equally important, there seemed to be a simple method by which she could secretly pilot the ship down to the planet surface. By studying the traffic patterns, it seemed clear that small ships the size of her own seedship were regularly landing and departing without official sanction. As many as one in twenty landings were accompanied by tiny shadows, the small ship riding close in the slipstream of the larger, merging their radar signatures. The ground controllers and almost certainly the captains of the shadowed ships should have been able to detect some of the activity, but never were any of the perpetrators apprehended. These actions and other elaborate efforts to escape detection by a veritable fleet of small ships that flittered about the system baffled the Parent. Her ship’s sensory enhancement systems were unparalleled, but it was difficult to believe that these obviously advanced aliens couldn’t match it. She had no real concept of graft and corruption, at least not on such a broad scale. She briefly entertained the idea that the aliens were already being invaded by a third party, or perhaps that they were staging wargames to train their pilots.

Shuffling her sensory fronds in a gesture equivalent to a shrug, the Parent decided that the rationale behind the comings and goings was of trivial importance to her plans. What was important was that this practice represented a path for her to make her landing undetected.

She sat back from the optics interface and slurped a liquid refreshment into her digesters. Inside her fourth birthing chamber she felt the stirrings of an offspring. It was an umulk, the largest of the offspring she was currently gestating. Very soon, the larvae would break out of its capsule and be born, soft wet spines hardening, mouth open and mewling with ravenous hunger. The prospect of having a shipload of suckling larvae gave the Parent a deep sense of satisfaction.

She slurped more refreshment before returning to the optics. She enjoyed the slippery, slightly bloated feeling of having the offspring inside her. It would be good to see her larvae grow and mature into fine Imperial warriors.

Sergeant Borshe, out of uniform and off-duty, sat outside the Renaldo Hotel with two New Manchurian gunmen. Inside the hotel his plants pretended to clean the lobby, their weapons stashed in the utility carts which had been provided by the intimidated hotel management.

Ari Steinbach had quickly tracked the Governor down to the Renaldo and sent Sergeant Borshe out to take care of things. The Renaldo was a very nice, but not quite elegant hotel along Black Beak Avenue. The Governor had checked in about an hour ago and then left alone, either to make contacts or to eat, as it was dinnertime.

“This will be an easy one,” said one of the gunmen. He wore a suit of the most elegant style with neck ruffles of indigo silk. He fidgeted with a Wu rattler, keeping the sleek black barrel pointed at the car door.

“Don’t count you’re swimmers yet,” said Sergeant Borshe, checking his watch and thumbing the safety off of his Wu hand-cannon. He was a big man with heavy jowls and hands the size of rayball gloves. He looked all wrong in his clothes, like one of the great bald apes yanked out of Garm’s southern jungles and shoved into a suit. “They’re due any second now, boys.”

The New Manchurian toughs looked at him in disgust. Borshe was always finding a way to call them boys or monkeys. Borshe noticed their expressions, but didn’t bother to acknowledge them.

“Just because they’re giants doesn’t mean crap,” spoke up the younger one in back. He also wore a sharp-cut suit so as to pass for a hotel guest, but had kept his cloth headband. He put the barrel of his rattler on the driver’s seat headrest, inches from Borshe’s ear. “This gun will cut any giant in half, no matter how big.”

Borshe didn’t bother to reply. He pulled a second hand-cannon from his rucksack and checked it thoroughly. Then he glanced in the rearview mirror. “Governor is coming in.”

The two toughs wheeled in their seats and they all watched as the cab slid up to the lobby doors and sank down on its skids. Borshe hit the dimmer and the windows went dark, shading the inside and hiding their faces and weapons. Goosing the power rod, he followed the cab up the drive.

Governor Droad wasn’t pleased with what he learned from the files he had purchased from the Captain of the Gladius. Nexus Cluster Command’s worst fears concerning the progress of Garm toward corruption and decay had apparently been surpassed since he had left Neu Schweitz three years before. Graft, smuggling and factionalism amongst the ruling elite had the colony teetering close to anarchy.

Equally disturbing, the previous governor had lasted only a few weeks into his term before experiencing a deadly accident over the red hork jungles in New Amazonia. The new governor was of the worst sort. Hans Zimmerman was a self-serving inbred crony of the ruling families. Spineless and unconcerned, he apparently left the job of rulership completely up to the aristocratic Senate, coming out of his permanent vacation only long enough to perform the most perfunctory duties of state.

As he climbed out of the cab, Lucas Droad saw the car coming up the drive out of the corner of his eye. The car was coming a bit too fast, but he wasn’t really ready for an attack yet, so he didn’t respond. He paid the driver and mounted the steps into the hotel lobby. The car pulled up behind the cab and the doors slammed shut behind the three men who piled out. Lucas looked back and noticed that the car had the windows dimmed even though the sky was entirely overcast. Then he saw the shape of a sleek black weapon and threw himself at the glass hotel doors.

Tossing the confused bellhop out of his way, he plowed into the lobby, drawing a slim-barreled pulse-laser. Bullets shattered the glass behind him and the bellhop was cut down, blood welling up from a dozen holes in his blue vest and staining his silver epaulets. Surprised to find himself still breathing, Droad sprinted into the marble-walled lobby.

Tapio Kuosa, one of his giant bodyguards, sat in the lobby reading a newsfax and sipping hot caf. He looked up as Governor Droad came running in. With one moment of eye contact the giant was up and drawing his weapon, but it was already too late. The Manchurian janitor behind him fired thirty rounds into the back of his huge head. The Finnish giant toppled forward. His body destroyed a rich horkwood table while the red ruin of his head crashed between two shouting guests on a silk divan.

Another assassin came out of the restroom with his weapon raised. Lucas dove over the front desk, flattening a clerk. The clerk’s hairpiece skittered across the floor. Bullets streamed over the desk and a woman screamed.

From outside there was a heavy crump of a high-powered weapon. The car the assassins had come in exploded into melting fragments. Lucas darted up over the counter and burnt away the throat of the man who had come out of the restroom while he hesitated, looking at the burning get-away car.

Then a big Anglo man pushed through the glass doors, holding a hand-cannon in each of his beefy fists. Lucas threw himself to one side behind the desk, taking a spray of plastic splinters in the face and arms as the hand-cannons barked in unison.

The assassin approached the desk, blasting head-sized holes in it as he came. Then the glass doors behind him simply disintegrated. His hand-cannons barked once more before he was seared by a direct hit of plasma from behind. As soon as the echoes of the plasma blast had died down, the sounds of the street outside could be heard through the opening. Charging into the breach came Jarmo Niska carrying a recoilless plasma rifle big enough to mount on an armored personal carrier. Two more black and silver dressed giants backed him up. More giants sprinted from the elevators and gunned down the last of the assassins in the hotel.

The remainder of the governor’s bodyguards thundered down the stairs and into the smoke-filled lobby. Jarmo made a quick inspection, then whistled and gave a quick hand-signal. Lucas still crouched behind the front desk with his pistol in his hands while the terrified clerk eyed him with dread.

“Do you think they’ve gone?” asked the clerk.

“Only until the next time,” said Lucas, giving the man a grim smile. He tried to get up and found that his leg had been injured.

“Are you hurt, sir?” asked the huge, moon-like face of Jarmo Niska as he loomed over the desk.

“Yes, my leg caught a few splinters, I think. Pull me up, will you?” While the hotel clerk gaped, Jarmo bent over the desk and gently lifted Lucas Droad into the air.

“I think that our location and identities have been compromised, sir,” said Jarmo stiffly. His yellow-blond brow furrowed deeply as he examined Lucas’ injuries.

“Obviously. So much for posing as a bank inspector, eh? Could you hand me a med-kit?” asked Lucas, tearing apart his left pantsleg and exposing a bleeding wound. He sighed, they had no time to pick out the red horkwood splinters and buckshot now. He simply sprayed on a double layer of pink nu-skin and tossed the empty canister. Meanwhile, Jarmo marshaled his team and placed them about the lobby in a defensive arrangement. Sirens sounded out on Black Beak Avenue as police cars and an ambulance rushed toward the hotel.

“What’s our situation?” he asked Jarmo.

“One of our men dead, plus seven civilians. We put down all of the assassins. We’re running an ID check on them with the police computers now. Several more of the civilians were badly injured. I took the liberty of calling the emergency services on my phone.”

“You did excellently, Jarmo, as usual. Once again, I owe you my life. I hope we all live long enough for me to repay the debt,” said Lucas, struggling to stand. The anesthetic in the nu-skin was taking hold, easing the pain and stiffness temporarily. He looked over toward the fallen giant, his ruined head still face down on the silk divan. “That’s Tapio Kuosa, isn’t it? Damn.”

“Yes sir, a good man,” replied Jarmo. His eyes never stopped roaming over the lobby and the street outside. His phone beeped and he touched the device embedded in his huge ear. After listening for a few seconds, his expression changed to one of alarm. He shouted curt orders to his men who jumped to obey. Outside, the police vehicles and the ambulance had pulled up. The police were forming up behind their cars, readying their weapons.

“Sir!” boomed Jarmo, his voice deafening at close quarters. “The Caucasian was a police sergeant, off-duty!”

Lucas’ head jerked up at this, looking out the blown out doors toward the gathering police forces. He nodded. “So that’s how it’s going to be.” He turned back to Jarmo. “Emergency exit. Let’s move it.”

Without bothering to acknowledge the command, Jarmo shouted again in Finnish to his men. They withdrew instantly from their posts, retreating from the policemen outside. Lucas hobbled painfully after them into the corridor, and then suddenly he was swept up in a pair of massive arms. He was carried off at a sprinter’s pace into the hotel. Feeling slightly embarrassed, he looked up into the blue eyes of Jun, a man with a nose the size of Lucas’ fist. All around him the other Finns clustered, ducking down as they ran so as not to ram their heads into the ornate overhead lighting fixtures. Behind them, the police cautiously approached the smoldering hotel lobby.

“Everyone in the hotel is under arrest,” said a sergeant with a bullhorn from the safety of his vehicle. “Lay down your weapons and come out.”

They ignored the corrupt police and carried Lucas swiftly to a location they had scouted out immediately after checking into the hotel. Jun turned to shield the Governor with his body as two other giants unlimbered their plasma rifles and simultaneously fired at the back wall of the hotel. Masonry vaporized and fragmented, blasting a hole out into the open air. Moving as a smooth team, the men rushed through the breach and climbed into the rented hover-limos that waited in the parking lot beside a row of trash consumers.

“We have a safe hiding spot nearby, sir,” Jarmo said as they climbed into the car. “We’ve lost our pursuers for now, but we should take cover until things cool down.”

“Right, we’ll duck low for tonight,” Lucas sat on the floor of the limo, surrounded by the huge hunched-over forms of his bodyguards.

“And tomorrow?”

“We’ll head back to the spaceport,” said Lucas grimly. He noted Jarmo’s upraised eyebrows. “They aren’t going to let us just walk in and take their power from them, that much is clear, but I’m not going to just hide, either. Grunstein Interplanetary is owned by the Cluster Nexus itself. We’ll make our stand there.”

Jarmo dipped his head slightly: a nod. He gave a small shrug and then went back to the business of keeping the Governor alive.