Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy's Edge: a space opera anthology Read online

  The rich soil where the jungle stopped appeared churned up, as if a well-disciplined platoon of wild hogs had come through here. But Seed World Four-Seven-Alpha had no life bigger than a dragonfly before Jensen and Roy arrived. The introduction of larger species had to be carefully controlled over decades to ensure a stable food chain.

  Jensen selected a silver tube off his belt and knelt to scoop up a soil sample. He’d let Moira do all the brainwork.

  Ping-ping!

  The motion alert on his suit made Jensen snap to his feet. A vibration on his upper left chest pointed him toward whatever set off the sensor. Not Roy. Judging from the sound of crashing underbrush and snapping branches, the dog was exploring the jungle about fifty feet to his right.

  Gun up, moving heel-to-toe, stable shooting platform.

  He scanned for movement over the sights. Insects flitted behind him, but his motion alert was set to Combat Spec. It would only register something larger than two feet in length.

  And as far as Jensen knew, the only two things in this star system that met that criterion were Roy and him.

  He whispered into his throat mic. “Roy, here.”

  Within moments, Roy stood at his side, ears up and forward, eyes locked ahead.

  “Attack us?” Roy’s neck speaker said.

  “No,” Jensen said.

  “Attack them?”

  That had actually been Jensen’s first instinct. In his world, when you knew where all the good guys were, you shot at anything else that moved. Especially when you’re light years from home and backup.

  However, he worked for the Science Wing right now‌—‌Better than being mothballed after the war‌—‌and none of those pinheads had ever seen combat. They just wouldn’t understand if he killed some life form out here. Ours or otherwise.

  “No. Only look. Go now,” Jensen said.

  Roy obeyed without hesitation. He slunk off into the brush to the left. Jensen stayed in the green, away from the line of dark soil and rocks three feet to his right. Unsure of exactly which side he should watch, he just stayed put and waited‌—‌

  Roy’s frantic barks set Jensen in motion like a starter’s pistol. He hustled through the brush, snapping twigs and crushing plants and flowers. He skidded to a stop next to his dog, finger a millimeter from the trigger.

  The hollow boom of Roy’s barking had brought all the flitting insects to a halt. The dog stood in the green, but had his eyes locked on the dark soil. Out there. In the dead zone.

  “Off!” Jensen yelled.

  Roy stopped barking. He circled Jensen, excited and whining. “Move. Something move,” Roy said. “Out there.”

  Ping-ping!

  The suit alarm and Roy’s renewed barking made Jensen flinch so hard he almost shot off his own foot. Did he really see that? A mound of dirt out there. Had it been there before? He hadn’t really paid attention. It looked freshly churned up, but so did all the soil close to the line.

  “Off!”

  Roy stopped barking again. He came to the heel position without being told.

  “Something move. Talk.”

  “Talk? Talk to you?” Jensen said. That gave him the creepies.

  “Yes. Bad feel,” Roy rumbled.

  The dog trembled against Jensen’s leg. Whatever pinged his motion sensor and churned up that dirt had Roy worried. Jensen had seen the dog leap into a gun pit full of Rhotellian Marines with heavy weapons and kill three men with his teeth. Nothing scared that dog.

  Except whatever the fuck this was.

  “Okay, we’re heading back. We have samples for Moira to analyze, anyway,” Jensen said.

  The two soldiers backed away together.

  * * *

  “This soil contains an abundance of a substance very much like mica, with atoms arranged in hexagonal sheets. But... it is not mica.”

  Moira’s clipped voice rang off the stainless walls of the ship’s tiny galley.

  “Well, what is it, then?” Jensen said.

  “I don’t know,” Moira said.

  Blowing on the cup of rancid black coffee did nothing to make it anything less than molten. Jensen dumped reconstituted cream into the tarry black liquid and took a sip.

  “Blech. Whaddya mean? You know everything.”

  “Hardly. I know only what my human programmers have told me,” Moira said. For a computer, she put on the human style snark pretty well.

  “Yeah? That makes two of us. So what’s the big deal? An alien rock is bound to have alien minerals, right?” Jensen said.

  He tossed Roy a piece of soy jerky. The dog gave it a half-hearted sniff, but didn’t eat it. Since they got back, he’d done nothing but lay there with his head on Jensen’s foot.

  For a computer, Moira had a wide range of ways to express her exasperation with Jensen. She actually sighed.

  “Early samples of soil from Seed Planet Four-Seven-Alpha indicate only trace amounts of this unknown substance, along with low readings of fossilized plant material. That’s the main reason we chose Four-Seven-Alpha. If plants grew here before, it stands to reason‌—‌”

  “Which is all very fascinating. I just want to know what gave me and my dog the creeps out there,” Jensen said.

  “I have no way of knowing what would cause an irrational psychological response in a human, much less a dog. What I do know for sure is that the soil is now riddled with this material that was once scarce. That, Jensen, would be called an anomaly in any basic high school science course.”

  The food printer beeped and Jensen eased Roy’s head off his foot. He stroked the dog’s neck. “Shake it off, big boy. We got ’za on the way!”

  He went to the printer and retrieved a pepperoni pizza. A disk of repurposed proteins dripping with orange oil. The first old Italian chef who came up with pizza would have killed himself if he saw this in the future. When Jensen sat down again, Roy put his head right back on his foot.

  “Jensen?” Moira sounded a little put out.

  Even Roy looked up when Jensen just kept eating.

  “Good food?” Roy growled/said.

  Jensen tossed a piece on the floor and Roy snapped it up.

  “Are you going to act like a juvenile, or are you going to discuss this with me?” Moira said.

  Fake pepperoni grease ran down Jensen’s chin. No expense spared for the troops. “Were we discussing? I thought you were just insulting me.”

  “This is why the real Moira argues against manned missions. You need to keep emotion out of the equation.”

  “Blah, blah, blah. Lots of mica. What’s the deal?” Jensen said.

  “As I said, it is not mica. Although it appears crystalline, it has a component I cannot identify. But I am unable to rule out the possibility that it is some type of unknown biological material.”

  “Like... it’s alive?” Jensen stopped eating.

  “No. I believe it may be waste, of a sort.”

  “Waste? As in The Stinky Torpedo? Do I even wanna know what kind of thing would shit mica?”

  “Of course you do. And we’re going to find out.”

  * * *

  Jensen had tried the old military joke. “Who is ‘we’? You got a mouse in your pocket?”

  For all her sighs and tsks, Moira apparently hadn’t been programmed with a human sense of humor.

  The giant ferns and squatty fruit trees made him feel like the star of some old holo serial where the heroes traveled back in time. But the wet jungle smell and the trickle of sweat down the middle of his back reminded him of shipping to an uprising back home. Colombia. Nasty, nasty fighting.

  Twitchy now. Rifle already up, though he didn’t know what he was looking for. The fact that Roy stayed glued to his hip didn’t help matters. He didn’t have the heart to order the dog out front. The canine’s normally perky ears had been laid back against his sleek skull since they left the ship.

  “Okay, Roy?”

  The speaker vibrated so quietly. “No.”

  A dragonfly the size of
a sparrow swooped across Jensen’s vision and one wing struck the bridge of his nose‌—‌

  The high-pitched whine and sonic cracks from his maglev rifle filled the air. Plant life around them exploded in green gobs of juice and fiber. Only a split second, but thirty high explosive rounds had sprayed across the landscape.

  “Damn it. Teach me to keep my finger away from‌—‌”

  “Jensen, report.” Moira’s insistent voice in his earpiece.

  “Just trimming the bushes a little. Relax, Moira,” Jensen said. Last thing he needed right now was some damn computer‌—‌

  Roy suddenly began to whine and pace about. He eyed the jungle ahead, near the line of demarcation.

  “What?” Jensen said. “Roy, what is it?”

  “Bad.”

  And then the dog was gone, running toward the dead zone.

  “No, here! Roy, damn it, heel!”

  Jensen ran blindly, following his dog’s crushed path through the virgin undergrowth. When he ran out of the jungle and spotted Roy, Jensen almost wished he hadn’t found him. Standing with hind feet on the green vegetation, and front feet on the black soil, Roy quivered in place. He stared at the horizon, at nothing at all.

  At first, Jensen didn’t notice the little brown lump against Roy’s foot. Then it grew out of the churned soil and leaned against the dog’s foreleg. It looked like an overgrown hedgehog, with sleek brown hair. No, not hair. Shiny stuff, looked hard on the surface.

  “Roy, here,” Jensen whispered.

  Nothing happened.

  One foot at a time, Jensen shuffled toward Roy and the little creature. His rifle stayed up, but he didn’t really know what he would shoot. If he fired now, he’d take Roy’s leg off at the shoulder.

  “Roy.”

  Nothing. The dog just shivered in place and stared at the horizon while that freaky little thing rubbed on his leg.

  Jensen reached out to grab Roy’s collar. The thing against Roy’s leg looked up, revealing a tiny little face amid all the crystalline “hair.” Big brown watery eyes, in what looked like a leathery gray face. It didn’t seem aggressive at all. In fact, it looked cuter than any kitten Jensen had ever seen.

  His left hand hung in space, index finger extended to hook Roy’s collar. Those soft round eyes held him entranced...

  The creature leaped up and bit off the end of Jensen’s finger.

  No pain. No sensation at all. Not really teeth, but a beak-like thing behind those gray lips had nipped the end off his left index finger at the first knuckle.

  The warm spatter of blood on his boot triggered a deep reflexive breath. Sudden adrenaline hammered Jensen’s brain and sparks flew in his vision. “Shit!”

  He backpedaled, trying to line up a shot that wouldn’t hit Roy. The dog remained still as a statue.

  “Roy, here. Damn it, wake‌—‌”

  Ping-ping! The alarm stopped Jensen cold. From about ten feet out, a ripple began in the soil. The creature that bit him didn’t move. It just stared at him with cartoon character eyes as Jensen’s blood dripped down its hair/scales.

  When the ripple in the dirt got close to it, the creature let out a sharp shriek. It started hopping toward Jensen on stumpy legs that reminded him of an armadillo. Then the dirt wave broke open and dozens of them came at him. Exact copies of the first one, all with cute, disarming eyes and razor sharp beaks.

  Survival instinct took over and Jensen hosed the advancing wave with the maglev rifle. He emptied his entire magazine and the jungle filled with supersonic cracks and shrieks. When hit by titanium slugs, the creatures burst in a combination of gore and what looked like bits of shale.

  When he reached for a new magazine, he saw how stupid he’d been. He should’ve run.

  The first five hit him before he could snap the new mag in place. Bit right through a suit that stopped high-energy weapons, taking shallow scallops of his flesh. He screamed and smashed them with his rifle, squashing three of them before his foot caught on a low bush and he went down.

  A wave of them crashed over him.

  Shrieking that seemed to come from inside his skull. Biting, biting, a never-ending wave of hungry mouths‌—‌

  A roar like Jensen had never heard. Roy hit him and the creatures at full speed, turning the fight into a whirling ball of blood, shale, fur, and teeth.

  The dog snapped and chomped, ripping, crushing, throwing the creatures aside. The disciplined military K9 had disappeared, replaced by a prehistoric wolf-dog, living through its teeth and fury.

  Jensen found the strength to push himself to his feet. He froze when he saw the line of creatures. They’d followed him through the brush, so it was hard to count them hidden in the greenery, but there were easily two hundred of them.

  Why didn’t they just come then?

  Roy growled and the closest creatures seemed to fold in on themselves. It reminded Jensen of an old vid he saw of a hedgehog rolling up. In an instant, they were hard little balls of rock.

  Figuring he’d worry about the whys later, Jensen backed toward the ship. He slapped a fresh magazine in place.

  “Roy, let’s go. Back to the ship.”

  This time, Roy obeyed. He kept his teeth bared at the creatures and backed toward Jensen.

  Once Jensen had Roy under the muzzle of his rifle, the jungle filled with a rustling noise. The creatures he could see moved back toward the dirt they’d come from. He didn’t exactly know what happened. He’d never had First Contact training. All Jensen knew was that they needed to leave. Now.

  * * *

  Moira’s surgical arms made short work of Jensen’s injuries. The missing fingertip had been the worst of it. The rest of the wounds seemed terribly shallow for creatures apparently bent on killing him.

  “I am still unable to identify the chemical they left in the bites, but it doesn’t seem to be harming you. Perhaps it only serves to deaden the pain so they can continue to feed.”

  Jensen didn’t answer. He just watched her robotic arms work on Roy. Silicone-tipped metal fingers delicately lifted Roy’s upper lip and pulled another bit of hard material out. His mouth and upper neck were covered in tiny cuts. What looked like porcupine bristles made of crystalline rock were stuck all over his face and inside his mouth.

  Jensen held Roy across his lap while Moira worked. He thought for a while before he answered the computer.

  “That’s all incredibly interesting information, Moira. But not really. Let’s prep the ship to leave.”

  No answer as Moira dropped one of the spines into an analysis chamber. The chamber’s armored door closed, and white light flashed from the seams. Inside, the sample was incinerated and the gases analyzed.

  “Interesting,” Moira said. “Initial analysis shows this material has what we might call a genetic code that contains something similar to mica and an unidentifiable organic base.”

  “They’re made of minerals?” Jensen said.

  “By our definition, perhaps. It is simply a life form we cannot explain. That’s the closest my databanks can come to an answer. In truth, it’s much more complex. A being that is mostly rock could survive for thousands, perhaps millions of years between meals. Rocks don’t need sustenance.”

  “But the other part of them does. Whatever that is,” Jensen said.

  “Apparently. I do detect bits of plant life among these samples. As well as bits of you, of course,” Moira replied.

  “You said there were possibly plants here before. You think they ate them all and then what, hibernated after that?”

  “Perhaps. Normally, if a species experienced a population explosion greater than their food source could support, most of them would die off,” Moira said.

  “But if they could hibernate, then they could just... wait for more food to show up,” Jensen said.

  “You’re not nearly as ignorant as you first appeared.”

  Jensen flipped a middle finger at the ceiling camera.

  The last of the crystalline things came out of
Roy’s mouth and he hopped off Jensen’s lap and shook himself.

  “Go sleep,” he growled/said. The dog slumped off toward their quarters. Roy had a kennel, of course, but he always slept in Jensen’s quarters. Jensen didn’t blame him for wanting to sleep. He felt dog-tired, himself.

  “Okay, Moira, let’s get the ship ready for launch. I’m actually looking forward to stasis this time.”

  “Get some rest, Jensen. Tomorrow we’ll capture one of those creatures and then we can go back.”

  “Hey, I said prep the ship for launch. I’m not goin’ out there again. And since you don’t have any legs, or a body for that matter, looks like ‘we’ are out of luck,” Jensen said.

  “I shall remind you that you are an employee of the Interstellar Colonization Committee.”

  “I’m a soldier.”

  “Even more reason for you to follow orders. I quote, ‘If any physical cause of the plant extinction can be found, a sample shall be returned to Earth.’”

  “Yeah, we got samples out the ass. Prep us to launch, Moira.”

  “Jensen, these are unique life forms‌—‌”

  “Fine. I’ll do it myself from Override Control.”

  Jensen stood to leave and swayed on his feet. “Damn. All that adrenaline has me dizzy.”

  “Jensen, you are violating protocol by launching the ship on your own.”

  “They can fire me when I get back.”

  With one hand on the wall, Jensen headed for the med bay hatch. It got harder to move by the second. A low growl stopped him cold. Roy stood in the hatch, hackles raised and teeth bared.

  “Roy, what the hell are you doing? Off.”

  The dog advanced on him, walking stiff-legged, eyes rolling, jaws dripping with drool.

  “Roy, off!”

  No sign of recognition.

  “Jensen, he appears to have been affected by‌—‌”

  “No shit, Moira!”

  Jensen backed away until he had a small table between himself and Roy. Feeling more and more dizzy, Jensen leaned on the table. He knew to take the bite on his forearm when Roy made his move, and reach under to choke the dog out. But would he be able to stay upright long enough to do it?