Out of the Dark Read online

  “And then there’s the Shongairi,” Garsul pointed out. A symphony of scowls greeted the remark, and he shrugged his upper shoulders. “I’m just saying these creatures at least have the excuse of their social and technical primitivism. The Shongairi don’t.”

  “Well, true,” Joraym said in the tone of someone trying very hard to be detached, “but the Shongairi are bound to be a little . . . twisted, you know. I mean, they are . . . carnivores.” The xenoanthropologist’s distaste for the near-obscene term was evident. “I hate to say it, but these ‘humans’ are omnivores. They don’t have that excuse, Garsul.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Wait!” Syrahk interrupted. “Something’s happening!”

  • • • • •

  “My Liege!”

  Henry looked up at the messenger’s cry. The king was on his knees, beside the pallet on which his youngest brother Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, lay. Humphrey was barely three weeks past his twenty-fifth birthday, and Henry had personally led his guard to Humphrey’s rescue when he went down. They’d gotten him out of the maelstrom and back to the surgeons, but he’d been wounded in the abdomen, and belly wounds were fatal far more often than not.

  “What is it?” the king asked harshly now, fatigue and worry over his brother shadowing even his indomitable visage.

  “My Liege, I think the French are regrouping!”

  Henry rose abruptly, striding through his protective cordon of knights and men-at-arms to see for himself. The French rearguard had never advanced, but now the third line was stirring, and his jaw tightened. There were almost as many men in that line as in his entire army, and his archers’ arrows were exhausted. It would take hours to get more of them up from the baggage train, and in the meantime his men were weary and out of formation and their prisoners were still unsecured. Literally thousands of armored Frenchmen lay in the mud—exhausted and fallen, perhaps, but unwounded—and their weapons lay with them.

  Henry looked up the length of the field at the remaining French host and his nostrils flared.

  “Fetch me Baron de Camoys!” he commanded.

  “At once, Your Majesty!”

  A messenger hurried off and returned minutes later with Sir Thomas de Camoys, who’d commanded the English left wing throughout the battle. With the death of Edmund of Norwich, the Duke of York, who’d commanded the right wing (and who, like hundreds of Frenchmen, had suffocated under a crushing pile of dead men and horses), Baron de Camoys had become Henry’s senior field commander.

  “Your Majesty,” de Camoys said, bowing, and Henry jabbed a gauntleted finger at the stirring French third line.

  “Those bastards mean to attack us, Baron,” the king said flatly, his scarred face grim, “and we cannot chance what will happen here”—the same hand indicated the mud-mired Frenchmen heaped and piled before the English line—“when they do.”

  • • • • •

  This time, Garsul did vomit.

  Perhaps it was simply cumulative revulsion. Perhaps it was more than that. Whatever it was, when the English began methodically slaughtering the helpless French men-at-arms and knights, thrusting daggers through visors or using axes and hammers and mattocks to literally hack open their armored carapaces and get at the men within, it was too much.

  He turned away from the display at last.

  “Kill the audio!” he said harshly. “We don’t need to hear this!”

  The sound of screams, babbled pleas for mercy, and prayers cut off abruptly, and Garsul shook himself.

  Clahdru, he thought sickly. Clahdru, preserve me. Of Your mercy, grant that I never see anything like this again! I thought those “secret orders” of mine undermined everything Survey stands for, but not now. Now I know how wise the Council truly was to issue them!

  “We’re done on this world,” he said, his voice flat. “We’ve got all the physical data we need, and Clahdru knows we’ve got more ‘societal’ data than any sane being is ever going to want to look at. Ship Commander,” he looked at Syrahk, “I want us out of orbit and headed home within two day segments.”

  PLANET

  KU-197-20

  YEAR 74,065 OF THE HEGEMONY

  . I .

  “So, fearless hunter, are you ready for your venture into the deepest, darkest wilderness? And did you pack enough pemmican and jerky?” Sharon Dvorak inquired with a sweet smile.

  “Was that last question a shot?” her husband responded suspiciously. He turned and cocked an eyebrow in her direction. “It was, wasn’t it? It was a shot! Nay, a veritable aspersion—that’s what it was!”

  “It’s sad to see a grown man—theoretically, at least—who’s so sensitive about these things.” Sharon sighed, shaking her head with infinite sadness.

  “Yeah, sure!” Dave Dvorak snorted. “That from the woman who invented the word ‘zinger’! I know. You’re just being nasty because of that little faux pas the last time we took you hunting.”

  “Oh?” Sharon widened her eyes innocently at him. “You wouldn’t be referring to that failure to bring along sufficient comestibles, would you? The memory failure—on my brother’s part, I believe you said—where the food was concerned?”

  “It was not a memory failure,” Dvorak replied with immense dignity. “We simply regarded it as an opportunity for you to learn to subsist on the bounty of nature in the same fashion as us hardened hunter-gatherers. Nuts and berries, mushrooms instead of toadstools—that sort of thing.”

  “I could’ve sworn I heard my beloved spouse bitching and moaning about ‘nuts and berries’ for that entire trip.”

  “I’m sure your memory is simply playing you false.”

  “Oh? Then you aren’t the one who said ‘I’ll trip him and sit on him while you go through his pockets for Slim Jims’?”

  “Oh, I suppose the words might have slipped out somehow, since the greedy bastard wasn’t willing to share with us. I mean, because of the low blood sugar associated with starvation, of course,” Dvorak amended hastily. “Assuming any such episode had ever occurred, which I very much doubt.”

  “Oh, of course not.”

  Sharon shook her head and smacked him—gently, for her—across the top of the head. She had to stand on tiptoe to manage it, since he was a full foot taller than her own five feet two, but she’d had plenty of practice over the years.

  He grinned down at her and wrapped both arms around her. She was exactly the right height to hug with his chin resting on the crown of her head, and he closed his eyes as he savored the embrace.

  “You sure you don’t want to come with us?” he asked in a much more serious voice. “Rob and I can still make room. And your tree stand’ll fit just fine.”

  “You two can go out and sit in the woods in the rain if you want. Me, I’m staying home and curling up in front of the TV with that nice box of chocolates someone bestowed upon me—no doubt while in the grip of a guilty conscience.”

  “It may stop raining, you know,” Dvorak pointed out, studiously ignoring the rain pattering on the roof even as he spoke.

  “Yeah, and the horse may learn to sing.” Sharon shook her head, but she also smiled at him. “Go on. Have fun. I’ll even smear on the VapoRub when you come dragging home with pneumonia. But don’t expect me to come to your rescue when your loving kids look at you reproachfully across a plate of Bambi stroganoff.”

  “Hah! As if that silly movie ever slowed any of your carnosaur offspring for a minute. Velociraptors don’t care where the meat came from as long as it’s fresh, you know.”

  “Of course they don’t. But you know they’re not going to pass up the chance to cast their woebegone gazes upon you.” Sharon shook her head. “And don’t blame me! It’s your mother’s fault.”

  Dvorak considered that for a moment, seeking a proper rejoinder. None came to him, so he contented himself with sticking out his tongue and making a rude noise. Then he kissed her cheek quickly, gave her another squeeze, and headed out to the waiting pickup.

/>   • • • • •

  “So did she give you a hard time?”

  “I’ll have you know,” Dave Dvorak told his brother-in-law, Rob Wilson, severely, “that I am the master of my household. My lightest whim is law, my least desire instantly realized by all about me.”

  “Sure.” Wilson rolled his eyes. “You do remember that I’ve known my sweet little sister for, oh, the better part of forty years?”

  “If that’s the case, then I think you might want to reconsider the phrase ‘the better part of’ when it comes in front of that particular number,” Dvorak replied.

  “I can still take her three falls out of four,” Wilson replied, elevating his nose slightly.

  “I seem to remember a Thanksgiving dinner when she got hold of your asp and pretty nearly broke your right kneecap,” Dvorak said in a reminiscent tone.

  “Only because I didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Dvorak looked away from the road for a moment to grin at his brother-in-law. “You sure you weren’t afraid she was the one who was going to hurt you?”

  “Well, I guess the possibility—the remote possibility, you understand—had crossed my mind,” Wilson allowed. Both of them chuckled, and Dvorak returned his attention to the rain-streaked windshield.

  The two men got along well. Dvorak, an NRA-certified firearms instructor, ran an indoor shooting range. Wilson, after twenty years in the US Marine Corps, had gone into law enforcement. He’d risen to sergeant with one of the smaller upstate municipalities and served as the force’s designated marksmanship instructor before a high-speed car chase and a nasty collision led to a broken leg, significant loss of mobility, and a medical retirement. One of the best pistol shots Dvorak had ever met (he routinely ran the tables in the once-a-week pin-shooting contests at Dvorak’s range), he’d moonlighted helping Dvorak out while he was on the force. He’d gotten his own NRA certification back when he was his police force’s senior instructor, as well, so it had been logical for him to buy an interest in the business and go to work there full-time. It was a comfortable arrangement, and one which gave both of them the opportunity to expend a great deal of ammunition every week . . . and get paid for it. Sharon Dvorak and Veronica Wilson referred to it as “boys and their toys,” but neither Dvorak nor Wilson minded that. Anyway, both of the women had been known to outshoot them.

  Deer season was one of their favorite times of year, although as he looked out the windshield at the day’s weather Dvorak wondered exactly why that was. Of course, it was only five o’clock. There was plenty of time for the weather to get better before dawn, he reminded himself.

  At the moment they were on US-276, headed towards the small town of Travelers Rest, with their ultimate destination the Caesars Head / Jones Gap Wildlife Management Area just south of the South Carolina–North Carolina state line. Dvorak’s deer season had been disappointing to date—he’d only gotten to use up one of his tags so far—and Wilson had been fairly insufferable about it, since he only had one tag left. Had the ratio been reversed, Dvorak suspected, he would have opted to remain warmly in bed this sodden October morning. Such, alas, was the weakness of his character.

  Well, he thought, leaning forward and peering through the upper quadrant of the windshield at the still black heavens, at least if I do fill a tag today, I’ll have damn well earned it. He grinned, sitting back again. I can see it now. “Here, woman—hunter brings back food. Go. Cook!” He shook his head. I’d be lucky if she didn’t decide to cook me! Assuming, of course, that I wasn’t the cook in the first place.

  Thunder rumbled overhead, loud enough to be audible even through the hissing sound of tires on rain-soaked asphalt, but he studiously failed to hear it.

  . II .

  The attention signal whistled on Fleet Commander Thikair’s communicator.

  He would remember later how prosaic and . . . normal it had sounded, but at that moment, as he looked up from yet another ream of deadly dull paperwork, when he still didn’t know, he felt an undeniable sense of relief for the distraction. Then he pressed the acceptance key, and that sense of relief vanished when he recognized his flagship commander’s face . . . and worried expression.

  “What is it, Ahzmer?” he asked, wasting no time on formal greetings.

  “Sir, we’ve just received a preliminary report from the scout ships. And according to the message, they’ve made a rather . . . disturbing discovery,” Ship Commander Ahzmer replied.

  “Yes?” Thikair’s ears cocked inquisitively as Ahzmer paused.

  “Sir, they’re picking up some fairly sophisticated transmissions.”

  “Transmissions?” For a moment or two, it didn’t really register. But then Thikair’s eyes narrowed and his pelt bristled. “How sophisticated?” he demanded much more sharply.

  “Very, I’m afraid, Sir,” Ahzmer said unhappily. “We’re picking up digital and analog with some impressive bandwidth. It’s at least Level Three activity, Sir. Possibly even”—Ahzmer’s ears flattened—“Level Two.”

  Thikair’s ears went even flatter than the ship commander’s, and he felt the tips of his canines creeping into sight. He shouldn’t have let his expression give so much away, but he and Ahzmer had known one another for decades, and it was obvious the other’s thoughts had already paralleled his own.

  The fleet’s main body had reemerged into normal-space barely four day-twelfths ago, after eight standard years, subjective, of cryogenic sleep. The flight had lasted some sixteen standard years, by the rest of the galaxy’s clocks, since the best velocity modifier even in hyper allowed a speed of no more than five or six times that of light in normal-space terms. The capital ships and transports were still two standard months of normal-space travel short of the objective, sliding in out of the endless dark like huge, sleek hasthar, claws and fangs still hidden, while the medical staffs began the time-consuming task of reviving the thousands of ground personnel who would soon be needed. But the much lighter scout ships’ lower tonnages made their drives more efficient in both n-space and h-space, and he’d sent them ahead to take a closer look at their target. Now he found himself wishing he hadn’t.

  Stop that, he told himself sternly. Your ignorance wouldn’t have lasted much longer, anyway. And you’d still have to decide what to do. At least this way you have some time to start thinking about it!

  His mind began to work again, and he sat back, one six-fingered hand reaching down to groom his tail while he thought.

  The problem was that the Hegemony Council’s authorization for this operation was based on the survey team’s report that the objective’s intelligent species—“humans,” they called themselves—had achieved only a Level Six civilization. The other two systems on Thikair’s list were both classified as Level Five civilizations, although one had crept close to the boundary between Level Five and Level Four. It had been hard to get the Council to sign off on those two. Indeed, the need to argue the Shongairi’s case so strenuously before the Council was the reason the mission had been delayed long enough to telescope into a three-system operation.

  But a Level Six culture was primitive enough for its “colonization” to be authorized almost as an afterthought, the sort of mission any of the Hegemony’s members might have mounted. And in this particular case, authorization had been even prompter than usual. Indeed, Thikair knew some of the Council’s omnivores—even some of its herbivores—had actually given their approval where KU-197-20 was concerned with hidden satisfaction. The visual and audio recordings the original survey team had brought back had horrified the vast majority of the Hegemony’s member species. Even after making all due allowance for the humans’ primitivism, most of the Hegemony had been none too secretly revolted by the bloodthirstiness those recordings had demonstrated.

  Thikair’s species wasn’t revolted, which was one of the reasons those hypocrites on the Council had taken such ill-concealed satisfaction in turning KU-197-20 over to the Shongairi. Despite that, they’d never agreed to the con
quest of a Level Three civilization, far less a Level Two! In fact, anything which had attained Level Two automatically came under protectorate status until it attained Level One and became eligible for Hegemony membership in its own right or (as a significant percentage of them managed) destroyed itself first.

  Cowards, Thikair thought resentfully. Dirt-grubbers. Weed-eaters!

  The epithets his species routinely applied to the Hegemony’s herbivorous member races carried bottomless contempt, which was fair enough, since that emotion was fully reciprocated. The Shongairi were the only carnivorous species to have attained hyper-capability. Indeed, before them, the prevailing theory among the various Hegemony members’ xenoanthropologists had been that no carnivorous species ever would attain it, given their natural propensity for violence. Over forty percent of the Hegemony’s other member races were herbivores, who regarded the Shongairi’s dietary habits as barbarous, revolting, even horrendous. And even most of the Hegemony’s omnivores were . . . uncomfortable around Thikair’s people.

  Their own precious Constitution had forced them to admit the Shongairi when the Empire reached the stars, but the Shongairi were still the Hegemony’s newest members, and the other species had never been happy about their presence among them. In fact, Thikair had read several learned monographs arguing that pre-Shongairi xenoanthropological theory had been correct; carnivores were too innately self-destructive to develop advanced civilizations. His people’s existence (whether they could truly be called “civilized” or not) was simply the exception which proved the rule—one of those incredible flukes that (unfortunately, in the obvious opinion of the authors of those monographs) had to happen occasionally. What they ought to have done, if they’d had the common decency to follow the example of other species with similarly violent, psychopathically aggressive dispositions, was blow themselves back into the Stone Age as soon as they discovered atomic fission.