Chapter Ten

But Alas, Hare Was Much Too Big To Fit Into Kangaroo’s Pouch

       “Sir! There was only moderate damage to one village that we flew over today. All the rest were intact. And there also were hardly any impact craters either.” He tried to swallow, but his mouth had no spit.

       “Where is this damaged village located, Lieutenant?”

       “About a hundred clicks south, south-west of here, Sir!” Wheepee added, “I’ve been scanning for any sort of construct with right angles. The Phili don’t use them, and I’m sure that this ship was rectangular.”

       “What do you mean ‘the Phili don’t use them?’” The commander was in his face. His breath made Wheepee blink.

       “The Phili use curves in all of their constructions. Their buildings are all shaped like the peaquas, with smooth curving lines. Even their doorways and windows are curved instead of square.” The lieutenant kept praying that he wouldn’t stammer.

       Wheatwheat turned to his friend, “Major Whordal, Put this message out to all Needles’ pilots. ‘Report directly to me anything, repeat: anything that their scans show as a square corner or angle on this planet. Do it now!”

       The major was up and out the door immediately. He was a slacker when it came to just about anything except what Commander Wheatwheat wanted. He knew that if he wanted things to stay cushy, Wheatwheat had to stay happy. At least, happy with him.

       The commander eased himself just barely out of the lieutenant’s personal space, put a hand on his shoulder and said in a warm, friendly manner that made Wheepee’s fur crawl, “Don’t think that I haven’t noticed that you seem to be one of the only well educated and, um, civil pilots in this outfit. If you keep me happy and your tails straight, you could go far.” He took his hand away and turned his back. “If you find this ship, you could even be Captain Wheepee by the end of this campaign, if you catch my drift.” He turned back to the pilot and looked him in the eye. He could see a glint of a smile creep onto the surface. He knew that he had made his point. "Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

       “Thank you Sir!” Wheepee snapped his tail and headed for the door.

       “One more thing.” The words oozed from the commander’s mouth like poison laced honey. “The word about this alien ship is spreading through the camp in rumor form. You wouldn’t be responsible for this, would you?”

       “No Sir!” came the terse reply. “But I have some idea who . . .“ He didn’t finish the sentence.

       Wheatwheat said through his oily smile, “Yes, Lieutenant, so do I. So do I. That will be all.”

       Wheepee was out the door and down the corridor before he let himself breathe normally. It was that goddamned Sworl. He just knew it.

       Limm and Moomoo watched Wheepee come out of the Boom Fangor. They followed him through the encampment of ships and Sweet. The wind was really howling, and he had a hard time making out the ships’ names because the blowing dirt brought visibility down to a couple of meters.

       As he finally passed the Singer, which was berthed right next to his ship, Horde of Locust, they caught up to him, one on either side. “Sworly wants to have a word with you, Wheeps,” Limm said in a low voice.

       Wheepee first looked surprised, and then a little fear crept into his face. He started to struggle, but Moomoo shoved the barrel of a peetle into his side. A peetle was a small, quiet but deadly Raider’s weapon that fired darts tipped with an instant acting tranquilizer and a slow, painful, and always fatal poison. He quit struggling and went with them. “The peetle was outlawed last year, you know. It’s a coward’s weapon anyway,” the lieutenant said, hoping to goad him into revealing something.

       Moomoo said nothing, but he jammed the barrel harder into his ribs. Limm said, “Shut up.” And that was all until they came to an area a hundred meters behind the row of ships, and quite hidden by large boulders that were strewn about.

       Sworl was there, sitting on a small boulder and looking at something in his hand. He looked up and smiled wickedly. “Hello, Wheepee. Have a sit down.” He had been cleaning his fingernails with a nasty looking blade.

       Moomoo shoved him down roughly and stepped back a few paces. Wheepee slowly came to a sitting position and said, “What’s this all about, Captain Sworl.”

       Sworl smiled at the other one’s use of his rank. “I’ll tell ya, Lieutenant, it’s about you an’ that lie of yours about another ship. You have to say out loud that you jus’ made it up. And that ain’t all. You have to tell Wheatwheat that you jus’ made it up too.” He reached behind him and brought up a bottle of Sweeny’s Best, a cheap liquor made from unripe fermented vegetables. He uncorked it and took a long pull and then shivered all over. He offered the bottle to Limm, but Limm shook his head. Moomoo licked his lips but said nothing.

       “I saw what I saw, Sworl,” Wheepee said. “Why would you want me to lie?”

       “Because you’ll bring them Boojams back down on us!” Limm nearly yelled.

       Wheepee looked up at him sharply. “And why are you so afraid of the Boojams, Limm? We got rid of the last of them weeks ago. And they weren’t haints, either. They were . . .”

       Limm kicked him in the face before he could finish his answer. Wheepee rolled back and came up ready to spring, but the wind and the damnable spin of the planet kept him off balance. His lip was split open and bleeding freely.

       Moomoo took a step forward, and the wind went out of Wheepee’s sails. He sat back down and wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve. Limm said in so near a whisper that Wheepee could barely make out what he was saying, “They almost got me at the end there. But I gave ‘em Sooney instead. I shoved a knife into his back and pushed him right into the haint as it was coming for me! For me!” His eyes were wild and getting wilder by the second.

       Wheepee looked at Sworl and then at Moomoo. “You threw in with the likes of him? He’s gone off the borough. Just look at him.”

       Sworl and Moomoo didn’t move. They just stared at Limm. Limm was staring wide-eyed at all three of them. Moomoo slowly said to Limm, “You killed Sooney? He was my friend.”

       Limm lost it and lunged at Wheepee. Moomoo brought the peetle up and fired once. Limm went down in a hard crumple. Nobody said anything at first. Then Wheepee said, “We need to hide the body. He can just disappear.”

       Moomoo finally went over to Sworl and took the bottle from him. “I’ll take care of ‘em.” He hoisted Limm's limp body up and over one shoulder and took it and the bottle of Sweeny’s Best further out into the blinding dust storm.

       “Look, Wheep,” Sworl started.

       “Forget it, Sworl. I know that the Boojams got your second mate. I can see how Limm’s talk could get to you. Let’s just make sure that none of the other crew find out about all of this.”

       “Yeah, sure.” Sworl was drunk, angry and confused. “I need a drink.”

       “Come on over to the Horde, Captain. I have something much better than Sweeny’s Best put away for when I needed it. And I need it now.” He helped Sworl to his feet, and they headed off toward the ships.

* * * *

       One thing the Phili had learned from Charlie was the use of a sled. He figured out that they couldn’t levitate themselves. Whenever they needed to go up in the air, they had to get another Phili to oblige them. But from watching Charlie’s wagon, they figured out that they could stand on a clay sled and lift that with no problem. It had just never occurred to them to do that before. It seemed that everyone in the town was now riding a sled. Charlie thought it was hilarious, but the Phili loved it. Even Wingy had his own sled. When Wingy first brought his sled to show Charlie, he soared up to the Carter at a height of about two inches and gracefully slid to a stop. Pea was riding behind and squealing madly. Wingy stepped off of the sled, made it rise to waist height and patted it. “Okee Dokee,” Wingy said.

       “Okee Dokee, CHARRRRLEEEE,” Pea yelled.

       “You mean you named your craft the Okee Dokee? You’re too much, my friend,” he laughed. He scooped Pea up and gently set her down. “Are you ready for another LOOMmmnnn, my little friend?” he asked Pea.

       “Go on trip! Go on trip!” Pea said. “Charlee and Pea go get grass.”

       Charlie laughed and said to Wingy, “I guess you have to be a young’n to pick up another language so quickly.” He knew that Wingy understood English fairly well, but he didn’t speak it much. That’s why he was always so surprised when the alien came up with a new English word or expression. “Well, are you ready, Little Munchkin?”

       “Pea is ready, my Charlee.”

       “We’ll be back before dark, Pops,” Charlie joked. Of course, it was always dark on TUUchiii, because there was no sun.

       They had been out for a couple of hours, and the trailer was nearly full. Keeping the grass in the cart had been tricky, but that had become Pea’s job. She kept the long, tough grass weighing just enough so that it wouldn’t blow away while Charlie piled it in.

       He kept a sharp lookout at all times for any of the rather large animals, like the giant MMooost that had nearly done him and Wingy in that first day. He had let OOOOMMmm, the leader of Wingy’s clan keep his Glock pistol, but he had his .44 Magnum revolver strapped to his side, just in case. “That’s about it, Pea,” he called.

       “Okee dokee,” she called back. She was waiting for him at the door of the Carter. That was something that he insisted on. He wanted Pea near the door at all times on their little forays into the wild, because he always worried that an animal might sneak up on them. Pea thought it was silly, but she always obeyed.

       He had just started toward the front when he heard a roaring sound. At first he thought it was a wind storm, though those weren’t nearly as frequent as he had first assumed. Then he realized that this sound was coming from somewhere overhead and off to the North. A ship! He ran for the door, scooping up Pea as he ran in and slammed the door. “Caroom, Little One!” He put her down as soon as they were in and hurried to the controls. “God, I hope they didn’t spot us.” Then, with a flick and a twist, they were back at the village. Wingy came sliding up as he and Pea were exiting.

       “CAROOMMMmmm!” it boomed.

       “Yeah, I know. So it flew overhead here too, huh?”

       A large group of Phili riding their sleds was gathering in what Charlie thought of as the town square. They were organizing a defense group to guard the town from an invasion. Wingy had gotten it across to him that they didn’t think that the aliens had left. Charlie agreed with them. He knew that the Carter was going to stick out like a bumble bee at a fly convention on radar, but there wasn’t much he could do about it except take it out away from MmmossssP so that it wouldn’t be associated with the town.

       Wingy made it known that it wanted to ride along, and Charlie was glad. He let Pea come along, too, because inside of his craft was the safest place on the planet.

       He dug out a set of walkie talkies and had Wingy give one to OOOOMMmm. All the leader had to do was press a button and Charlie would know that there was trouble.

       When they were all set, he took the craft a hundred miles to the north with hopes of finding where the ship had come from. He set his radio to scan for any broadcasts, and then he set about searching in a grid pattern. His small radar would pick out any sort of ship, whether it was on the ground or in the air as long as it was within a hundred miles or so. Almost immediately he had a hit. He refused to believe what he was seeing at first. There were almost a hundred ships on the ground a few miles from their location, and there were other ships coming and going. He regretted leaving the cylinder ships up in space now. He really had thought that they were totally dependant on the mother ship for survival. He had also believed that they would perish in space. So much for assumptions.

       The radio erupted in to sounds of what sounded like whistling and squealing. The scanner kept changing frequencies, but the airwaves were alive with the strange sounds. Suddenly the huge planet seemed very small. He wondered what the aliens were thinking about the Carter right about then. He was fairly sure it would show up on their radar because of the way the pulsing of the drive worked. But he was also pretty sure it wouldn’t show up with any patterns that they would recognize.

       He hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on immediately outside the ship because he was so absorbed with the radar. “Charlee,” he heard Wingy say.

       He looked up, and they were surrounded by about thirty of the pipe bombs. “So, we have company. What say we go with them and see what we can see?” He turned the craft and intimated that he would follow. They headed down into the frying pan.

* * * *

       Voice one: “We have something on radar.”

       Voice two: “Can you identify it?”

       Voice one: “No, Sir. We don’t have this pattern on file.”

       Voice two: “What is its location?”

       Voice one: “About thirty clicks east.”

       Voice two: “Take a squadron of Needles and investigate.”

       Voice one: “Roger that.”

       Wheatwheat knew what was coming.

       Voice one: “We are at the phantom’s location. It's about ten meters long by three meters wide by three meters high. It is rectangular.”

       Wheatwheat flipped a switch, “This is Commander General Wheatwheat. Force that ship down. Bring it back to base, but do not fire upon it. I repeat, I want the ship intact!”

       Voice one: “Yes Sir!”

       Voice one: “Sir! The ship is being led back to base. ETA is three minutes.”

       Finally! The commander grabbed his cape as he headed out the door to greet his new guests.

       The commander, Major Whordal and a squad of twenty soldiers waited at the landing site. The wind seemed worse than ever and he quickly regretted bringing the cape. He finally took it off and handed it to one of his attendants. The ships were now landing, and their exhaust made the dust even worse. He didn’t care. He was stunned at how drab and boxy this craft looked. And it had no exhaust the he could detect. It landed gently on the makeshift pad and was surrounded by Needle ships and troops. Nothing happened. No one came out. He ordered a sergeant to knock on the door.

       The sergeant got about one meter from the ship and ran smack into some sort of invisible wall. A force field! They were supposed to be scientifically impossible. Suddenly, it looked like the sergeant was being pushed by an invisible broom to a distance of about four meters from the craft. Then a door opened, and one Phili and one other being stepped out. The dust was in his eyes, but it looked like a damned gypsy. The furless skin always made him queasy. It was like looking at a naked rat. The two stood looking at all of the firepower that was trained on them, but they looked like they could care less! Well, the game begins. He stepped forward and made a welcoming gesture to the two beings. He waited for the gypsy to send his thoughts to him, but none was forthcoming. It made some sort of returning gesture expressing one of the digits on its naked hand. Maybe it wasn’t a gypsy. Finally it stepped forward to within a meter of the commander and waved, smiling.

* * * *

       They were surrounded by pipe bomb ships and strange looking aliens with what looked like guns. The aliens stood upright on two legs, but that was where the resemblance to man ended. They looked to be a cross between slender six foot cats with dog faces. And they had two long slender tails. They were dressed in military looking uniforms, caps and rifle-like weapons. “Blasters at twenty paces, eh, Ming?” he remarked. As he walked toward the extent of the inertia filed, one of them, a short scarred one, stepped up and made a welcome type of gesture. “And welcome to you too, Garloo. Here’s my aching finger.” He turned and said to Wingy, “I think we’ve seen enough here. Let’s go.” He walked slowly back to Wingy and the Carter.

       The short one stepped back and whistled something. The cylinder ships’ beam weapons erupted, pouring out liquid destruction, and the inertia field became a spherical firestorm of molten color. Charlie flinched a bit and thought here’s where I find out if I made any mistakes in my ‘rithmatic. I sure hope I make Mrs. Jennings proud. The field held, but Charlie was concerned what kind of power drain the beam weapons put on his system. He knew he wouldn’t run out of power as he was running a miniature nuclear power plant. Privileges at University had its perks. But he didn’t know how quickly his batteries would be drained. The Carter was basically battery powered, and the batteries were constantly being charged by the nuke powered dynamo.

       It was just as he thought. The drain was phenomenal. Smashing meteors and flying across the galaxy had only minimal drain on the batteries, but the assault of these unknown power weapons was rapidly threatening to overwhelm his homemade system. “Are you two ready?” he asked as he gave the control stick a twist.

       And nothing happened. The field was still up, but they hadn’t moved. Charlie nearly panicked, as he scanned the readouts. Then he stopped on one in particular. The inertia pulsing cycle was changing frequencies faster than he could read them. “Crap, Wingy! I think we’re in trouble! Caroom little friend!”

       Wingy shuddered violently. “LAAAANnnhhhh.”

       Pea echoed the sentiment. “Uh oh, Charlee,” she said.

       Charlie began typing frantically on the keyboard, looking up at the small screen every so often to check his results. He also kept glancing at the battery level LCD and growing more and more concerned. “It’s those beam weapons. They are causing a loop in the routine I wrote to handle the pulsing.” He knew Wingy wouldn’t understand most of what he said, but he felt it was better to be talking to his Phili friend than talking to himself. “It looks like the only way the break the loop is to reboot, but if we do that, we’ll probably suffer the same fate as the Wicked Witch of the West. And if they keep it up for much longer we’ll probably head that way anyway.” He looked at Wingy, “I wish I had installed some sort of calamitous self destruct. If we go, I’d sure like to take them with us in a mushroom sort of way.” He sighed and sat back. “Nothing more we can do, my friend. Care for a nice game of chess?” Wingy didn’t say anything. It was still vibrating like crazy and had begun a low “nnnn” sound. Charlie realized that it was trying to use its influence over gravity to save their butts. He said nothing so Wingy could concentrate.

       Nothing happened for precious seconds. Charlie thought his heart might just give up rather than handle the flood of adrenaline. Then little Pea join in. One of the cylinder’s weapons suddenly turned on the ship next to it, and that ship exploded, scattering debris and bodies for a hundred yards around. Then, without stopping the flood of energy spouting from its barrel, it turned to the next ship and then the next. Each ship touched by the deadly beam exploded into a fireball, and each fireball sliced and diced more of the beings surrounding the Carter into little bits of meat and cloth. Suddenly the remaining ships turned their beams from Charlie’s small craft and centered on the seemingly rogue ship. It exploded, but the energy from the combined weapons was so intense that the ship scattered no debris. It just vaporized.

       Charlie didn’t wait to see what would happen next. In a mere millisecond, they were a hundred miles from the enemy encampment. The Carter didn’t rise into the air first, either. He made sure they cut a small swath through the aliens and ships that had been surrounding them. When he was sure they were in the clear, he flew to a spot a hundred miles south of MmmossssP. He didn’t want to be out of range of the walkie talkie he had left with OOOOMMmm. He set his craft down and turned off the drive so it would have a chance to recoup the energy levels in the batteries. Then he turned to Wingy to make some witty remark, but he stopped short. Wingy was lying on the floor and not moving. Pea was sitting next to it. “LAAAANnn , WiiiIIInnnsss,” she was saying.

* * * *

       He began backing further away from the glowing sphere. It must have a threshold. The field can’t possibly keep its integrity for much longer. He was about to call for more Needles to fire from overhead when the unthinkable began to happen. He watched as a nightmare scenario began to unfold before his very eyes. He just stared in disbelief. One of the Needle ships, the Singer, turned its turret on the ship next to it. The ship, Sweet Pea, exploded, shredding the nearest of his soldiers. Next was the Warren, and then the Maelstrom. Each one took out twenty more of his men as well as their crews. He didn’t have time to order an action. The remaining ships surrounding the aliens turned on the malignant Sweet and vaporized it. The alien ship instantly vanished, but not without annihilating every ship and man in its path of escape.

       Everything went absolutely still and quiet. Every being was stunned. Then the sounds of falling debris and bodies broke the silence as the last destroyed ships and men came back to ground. Bedlam ensued immediately after. Soldiers’ screams of fright and Needle ships engine blasts rended the air as they scattered in sheer panic. Wheatwheat was knocked to the ground and trampled by fleeing soldiers. As he was being stomped, he kept saying out loud, “How, how?”

       Then he was being helped to his feet. He looked, and it was Major Whordal. “Wheaty, are you alright? Are you hurt?”

       “Ah, of course it’s you, Dahlly, my friend,” Wheatwheat said as he stood. Whordal was brushing the dirt from the commander’s uniform, but the wind put it back as quickly as he brushed it away. “That’s fine, my friend. I’m fine. Would you care to have a drink with me?” He looked at the major and smiled. The major looked even more worried, but he stopped fussing and nodded his head.

       Whordal was really worried that the commander had flipped. And if the commander was lost, so was his easy life. He helped Wheatwheat back to the commander’s cabin in the Boom Fangor. He sat in the chair on the opposite side of the big desk across from his friend.

       Wheatwheat sat in his chair and said nothing for a full minute. He appeared to be looking at nothing at all. Whordal’s concern increased. Finally, the commander’s eyes focused on him. He smiled but still said nothing as he reached into his desk for the bottle of Erlemain he always kept there. He pulled it and two glasses out and put them on the desk. As he poured double shots of the thick, purple liquid into the glasses, he said to Whordal, “Don’t worry about what happened out at the pad, Dahlly. It doesn’t mean anything. When the transports arrive –“

       Whordal cut him off, “Wheaty, when the transports arrive, they’re going to be screaming for our asses. We’ll be damn lucky not to be executed.”

       A cloud passed over the commander’s face. Then he finished pouring and smiled with his mouth but not his eyes. He handed the major a glass and said, “I said not to worry about it. We now have a damn good idea that what happened to the Sardell is also what happened out there. What we do have to worry about is getting the camp back in order.” He threw back his double shot and smashed the glass in the corner across the room. He smiled again slightly.

       “Yeah, the whole damn camp is going to be spooked and crying about those goddamn Boojams. We’ve got to convince them that the alien ship is just that. An alien ship with alien technology.”

       The smile returned to Wheatwheat’s lips. “I think we almost had that ship’s force field beat out there. If we only knew how it could control our weapons. Or maybe --” He trailed off.

       “What?”

       “Didn’t that alien look a lot like one of those Rompien we threw out of the Ging system last year? Thieves and cutthroats is what the lot of them was, but they were also telepathic.” Wheatwheat was slowly returning to normal.

       “But they swore, and we pretty much proved, that their control over other minds was tentative at best and weak at the least.” Whordal downed his drink and set the glass back on the desk. Wheatwheat frowned but said nothing.

       “But what if this one is a mule. A sport?” Then a horrifying thought crossed his mind. “What if that wasn’t a force field? What if he was using his mind?” He dug out another glass and poured another double. “We’ll have to assume that it wasn’t his mind he was using to deflect our plasma turrets. If it was, we might as well give up and go home.”

       Whordal agreed. He pushed his glass forward and the commander refilled it. “Well, I’ll go out and start putting the camp back together. Do I have authority to make a few … examples?”

       “Whatever it takes, Dahlly.” Wheatwheat grinned. Then he lost the grin and said in a low voice, “Here are my orders: ‘Any ship that spots the alien is to fire on it immediately and not to let up until it’s destroyed. But under no circumstances are two ships to attack it together.’ I still think that we had it in trouble.”

       Whordal finished the drink and stood. “Yes, Sir!” He turned and went out the door.

       Wheatwheat poured another drink and just sat there, lost in thought.

* * * *

       Charlie jerked his head up and scanned the skies. There was one cylinder ship heading right for him. Why didn’t the radar alarm go off? Well, he’d have to figure that out later. He reached for the controls, but before he got his hand on the stick, they were surrounded by the glow of the beam weapon again. “Crap!” Charlie complained. The radar started ringing. “Give me a break, won’t ya, Murphy?”

       He twisted the stick anyway, and much to his surprise, the Carter lurched forward a few hundred feet and then stopped again. It made several fitful starts and then just sat there. “It must be because there’s only one of them. We might have a chance yet,” he said out loud. He knew that Pea was much too small to influence the cylinder ship on her own.

       The pipe bomb was circling the Carter and really pouring it on. Charlie began writing a simple batch file to try to vary the pulsing of the drive. He couldn’t do a proper job by any stretch of the imagination, but he might be able to cobble something together to at least get them out of there. It only took him a couple of minutes before he had something. With much trepidation, he hit the “Enter” key and held his breath. Two things happened. First, the field went into a feedback loop, and second, it followed the plasma beam back to the attacking ship like the jolt from an electric fence following the stream of urine back to the offender. Then the field went dead. The alien ship didn’t explode. But it did drop from the sky like a rock. It wasn’t too high, and the fall didn’t look like it damaged it too much.

       Charlie jumped up and tore open one of the cabinets. From it, he pulled an old, reconditioned and illegally modified AK47 assault rifle. He grabbed two double clips from the shelf and ran to the door. He threw it open and jumped to a prone position on the ground, aiming the machine gun at the alien ship. The wind was tearing across the plain like a freight train. It made it hard to aim his weapon, and he had no idea how it and the spin of the planet were going to affect the bullets. “Stay down, Pea,” he called over his shoulder without diverting his aim. A door appeared in the side of the cylinder and slowly opened. Several of the cat-like aliens came pouring out. Charlie waited till he could wait no more, and he pulled the trigger.

       Three went down right in a row. The others scattered and dove to the ground. All but one. This alien fired something at him, and it exploded in a cloud of smoke when it hit the ground four feet from him. Charlie’s head began buzzing, and right before he went out, he thought, “Oh, crap!”