Mech

Five

The hot little water-world with its swampy sister planet had grown from a speck to a fat blue-white disk over the last two days. Less than a million kilometers out and coming in fast, the Parent began a hard three-gee braking to bring it into a safe descent pattern. Landfall was only hours away. The larvae had been hatched and birthed and now crowded the tiny ship with their humping, glistening bodies. They ate liberally of the protoplasm supplies, and the Parent estimated that soon the tanks would be sucked dry. At that point they would enter the pupae stage. They would transform and awaken as adult offspring less than an hour before the invasion began.

The Parent herself ate sparingly, taking in only enough to keep her ovaries working. Her external egg sacs were already distended with the seeds for more offspring, and every hour they swelled further.

The Parent heard a rustling back in the cryogenics chamber. Extending a pseudopod to investigate, she found two of the larvae had climbed through the hatch and had gotten into a death struggle inside. One of them had killed and half eaten the other, to her chagrin. She could not, of course, blame the surviving youngster. It was quite possible that the dead larvae had been defective genetically in some way. It shouldn’t have been so easily bested. Yet it was vexing to have to birth another so soon.

Reaching out with her tentacles, she herded the surviving youngster out of the chamber and sealed it. The others romped about in the control room and chased one another up to the ceiling on their sticky-padded feet. One of the larvae had bitten a chunk of sticky flesh from the other, causing it to run a little faster.

The Parent sucked up the carcass of the dead larvae with her foodtube and ruffled her tentacles in amusement at the antics of her offspring. Then she turned back to the ship’s data-interface. She shifted the ship’s approach path to bring it in directly behind the smaller planet, interposing the satellite between the planet and her ship. Orbiting the moon were many of the small ships that seemed to sneak down to the planet’s surface so easily. She targeted one that was just picking up speed and falling out of orbit toward the planet. Her dark, silent ship locked onto the target and rapidly closed the distance between them.

Once this was done, there wasn’t much left to do other than to enjoy the last frolicking of the larvae before they settled down and spun their fleshy, egg-shaped cocoons.

“Come on, come on, you poor wretches,” muttered Sarah Engstrom under her breath, sitting in the cockpit of her flitter.

Sarah’s flitter sat in the middle of the vast swamps of Gopus on an illegal saber-reed farm. Daddy and his son Mudface lived on the huge triangular-shaped island, a lump of mush called Sharkstooth. Their huge moldy stockade was visible through the trees, built out of tough mangrove-like timber. At each of the seven guard towers that lined the walls of the stockade bearded thugs slumped over their rattler turrets. Sarah eyed the walls with trepidation, although it looked primitive, she knew the electronics and weaponry employed by the drug kingpins were unsurpassed. They maintained a facade of simple-mindedness because they liked it that way.

Several hundred swamp-folk lived with them in and around the stockade, doing all the work and getting off-handedly abused for it whenever Daddy or Mudface had a little too much reed-whiskey.

She pushed her dark hair back from her face and wiped sweat on her jumpsuit. She wanted to move fast because Mudface was showing signs of getting amorous again, and worse, Daddy would be back any minute.

“You sure are pretty today, Sarah. You sure you don’t want another hit off the reed-juice?” asked Mudface, leering at her. He was rail-thin, with a stupid-looking grin that belied the malevolent cunning behind it. He flicked at the dark flies that encrusted a patch of filth on his cheek.

“No time for it, but thanks,” Sarah said, managing to smile back at the man. She knew that it was best to keep on the good side of Mudface and Daddy, especially when visiting their island. Despite their rustic appearance and manners, their illegal harvesting of selective varieties of swamp reeds had made them wealthy and powerful. “Your people have gotten almost all the cargo aboard now.”

Mudface nodded, watching the swamp-folk load Sarah’s flitter with bales of dried bluish saber-reeds. “Ground up into blur dust, this load will make a lot of people happy down there,” smiled Mudface. “We grow the best here on Sharkstooth, you know.”

“Yes, you can’t get a better hallucinogen anywhere in the system.”

“This is the good stuff. Our customers rarely go blind,” said Mudface proudly.

Sarah’s stomach twisted at the thought. Blur dust induced euphoria with the usual vicious side effects such drugs had on the chronic user. The drug was named for the side effect of temporary blindness, which sometimes became permanent. “I just can’t help but take on a load now and then,” Sarah said defensively. “Every free-lance spacer in the system does it, if only to make ends meet when the stiff spaceport usage fees, and the even stiffer graft premiums, come due. The colony is growing the demand for the drug is growing with it, inflating the price.”

Mudface looked at her in askance. “I think I missed your point, Missy.”

“Nothing,” Sarah said, shaking her head.

Mudface turned a sharp eye back to the swamp-folk, which were carrying heavy wicker cases to the flitter on their permanently crooked backs. One man, even thinner and less healthy-looking than the rest stumbled and sagged down beneath the weight of his burden. He struggled desperately to get up, feet slipping in the loose mud. Despite the generously low gravity on Gopus, he couldn’t stand. There was a wild look in his black-circled eyes. An old woman and a boy came forward to help him up, but Mudface waved them back. He pulled his short-barreled shotgun out of his belt and hit the old woman with it. It was a Wu hand-cannon automatic, loaded with high-velocity shells. She staggered away with blood running out of her bedraggled hair.

“I said leave him be! Y’all never listen!” shouted Mudface. Then he bent down beside the fallen man, prodding him with the barrel of his shotgun. The man struggled harder, and got one corner of the wicker case off the ground. “You sick or somethin’ boy? You ain’t got the fever, now do ya?”

Sarah squirmed in her cockpit, biting her lip.

“Can’t have you spreading no fevers,” said Mudface, cocking his hand-cannon.

“I’ve changed my mind about that drink, Mudface,” Sarah called from the cockpit of the flitter. “It’s quite hot out here.”

Mudface turned away from the man struggling in the mud and beamed his idiot’s grin at her. “Now, you’ve got that right, girl,” he said and sent the bleeding old woman into the stockade to fetch a fresh bottle of chilled reed-whiskey. As soon as his attention had shifted, the other swamp-folk helped the sick man to his feet and finished loading the flitter.

Then Daddy showed up, riding his sagging one-man flyer over the tops of the Red Hork trees and landing in the glade next to the flitter. Daddy was hugely fat, with a belly that protruded over the rim of his stained greasy workpants. His mean eyes protruded from their sockets, matching his belly. He had a trailer behind the flyer with a load of dead waterfowl in the cradle. Feathers, beaks and claws stuck out here and there between the slats.

“Looks like a nice catch,” said Mudface.

“Must be fifty, sixty black-beaks in there, plus a good dozen of those noisy gronk birds,” rumbled Daddy as he climbed off the flyer’s saddle. The flyer buoyed up a few feet in obvious relief, then the roaring engine shut itself off and the vehicle sank to the muddy surface. A group of bearded thugs gathered around the craft, slinging their weapons over their backs and whistling at the catch.

“Gronks are crap to eat.”

“Yeah, but these aren’t making noise anymore,” laughed Daddy, slapping his flabby thigh. He pulled out his hand-cannon, the twin to Mudface’s, and began reloading it with shells. He walked up to Sarah, still loading. A trickle of sweat ran down from his huge hands onto the hot barrel, producing a wisp of steam.

“What’s taking so long with the loading?” demanded Daddy.

“One of the swampers came down sick,” said Mudface.

“Sick? Has the fever, does he?”

Mudface nodded. He swatted a buzzing insect that chewed at the tough skin of his neck.

“Can’t have him giving it to the others,” said Daddy grimly. He headed toward the huts. Two of his thugs sauntered after him with grins splitting their dark beards.

“Can’t you just give them all some antibiotic?” asked Sarah in concern.

“Nope,” said Mudface. “It’s viral. No easy cures. There’s only one sure fix for a bad case of swamper fever.”

From inside the hut a shotgun boomed. Daddy came out again, looking satisfied. His thugs dragged the flopping body out and deposited it in the swamp.

“Now, you have our deal real straight, don’t you girly?” rumbled Daddy. He kept his eyes on his gun, shoving another shell into the magazine with a fat thumb.

“No question about it, I’ll transport this stuff down, hide it in the caves, then you deposit my share of the cash at First Stellar.”

“Nice and simple,” said Daddy. He raised his head and bored into her with hard little eyes like glass chips. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Sarah nodded.

“We’ve got friends with ways of fixin’ people who screw us,” said Mudface, his eyes were big and serious. He nodded to the thugs who wandered around the place. “I like you, Sarah. Wouldn’t want to see you get messed up.”

“That’s right,” added Daddy. He finished loading his hand-cannon and the breech snicked shut automatically. “I don’t like comin’ into town to do business. It’d be a shame to have that kind of business with you.”

“I assure you, gentlemen,” Sarah told them with her hands raised and open. She spoke with deep sincerity. “I have absolutely no intention of screwing up this deal.”

They both nodded, and the tension eased. Later, after they all had a cool glass of reed-whiskey, a surprisingly clean glass, Sarah made ready for lift-off.

“Awe now, look at that. That damned swamper got mud all over your flitter with that last case,” complained Mudface. “I’ll have ‘im beat for you, girly. Beat real good!”

Sarah’s mouth opened and she found herself about to say thanks automatically. Her tongue caught in her teeth and she said nothing.

Mudface just waved at her, grinning his idiot grin. Sarah pressed the automatic return button on the flitter’s control panel and soon his face was lost in the glade around the stockade. Then the glade was lost on the mold-green carpet of Sharkstooth and finally even the triangular island slipped away beneath the fluffy white clouds of Gopus. The flitter slid up into orbit and docked with her ship.

As she made her way through the airlock and climbed into the rotating shower to wash the sweat from her body, she thought about Mudface’s words beat real good, and shuddered in the warm water.

“Hello mom,” Bili Engstrom shouted into intercom. The sound startled her.

“Hello Bili,” she replied, “how’s your arm, any change?”

“Nope, the heal-bag’s still brown and just a little cloudy. How’s old Mudface? Still a pervert?”

“Bili, let’s not talk like that.”

The connection was cutoff for a minute or so while she removed her pressure suit and made her way in Zero-G up to the passenger section of the boat. Bili, who sat in the tiny galley section working on a model of Garm’s star system and getting glue everywhere in the process, took the time to examine his injured arm. He poked and prodded at the limb through the tough clear plastic bag that encased it in liquids until he could feel the pressure with his new, tingling nerves. His right arm had been crushed just above the elbow in the same accident that had killed his father out in the asteroid belt six months ago. His mother had gotten him to a clinic in time and they had amputated the mutilated arm. Without full medical, they couldn’t afford a really professional regrow, just one of those kits you could buy at the survival supplies department, alongside the jungle ape venom kits and the do-it-yourself amputation packages. It just wasn’t coming out right, though. The bag was supposed to remain clear and colorless, but had turned a nasty, hazy brown over the last two weeks. Bili gave it another hard poke and winced.

“Mom, we don’t have to do this job, you know,” Bili said as his mother emerged from an opening in the ceiling and did a summersault to a standing position. She wordlessly examined his arm in the healing bag. “It’s worse,” she announced tonelessly.

“We don’t need this job,” repeated Bili. “This regrow will work okay, and even if it doesn’t, I can get along with one arm. I’m left-handed, anyway.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid, we’re going to get you on full medical,” she said with false bravado. “It’s a done deal.” She ruffled his hair and used the handrails to pull herself forward to check the screens.

“Not much out there,” Bili said. “Not much on the scopes, either.”

Sarah did find one thing on the scopes however, a small ship of unknown configuration. It was coming in fast from the asteroid belts, approaching Garm from behind Gopus. She shrugged mentally; probably just another smuggler like herself, coming in to make a rendezvous with a freighter headed down to Garm. She pressed her fingers against her temples, feeling the sickness of despair gnawing at her guts. Every time she looked at Bili’s arm now, she wanted to retch.

Back in the galley, Bili poked his withered-looking new arm through the tough plastic again. It looked like a bunch of rotting sausages strung along a white plastic pipe, which was about what it was. He looked at the swirling brown liquids, circulating through the tiny pump and filter with a soft gurgling sound. He bet it stank in there. He bet it stank real bad.

Turning back to his project, he found the glue tube and began to glue the dark little pebble-shaped asteroids into place.