Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. (28 page)

“Air group,” she
said in her com as the creatures continued to push more of their mass onto the
shore.  “Are you in position?”

“In position,
locked and loaded, ma’am.”

The other five
crew in the tank reported in, and Suarez made ready to give the order.  She
hesitated for a moment, anxiety at not being able to stop these things almost
overwhelming her.  Most of the people in the city were safe, supposedly, under
the cover of modern buildings made to handle earthquakes and tsunamis.  And
again, there was no guarantee these things couldn’t get into them.  Besides,
the city was not all superstrong material construction, and the damage could
amount to hundreds of millions of Imperials.  And it was all on her to stop
that from happening.

One of the
creatures recoiled under the attention of a squad of police striking it with
sonics.  Suarez cursed under her breath.  The idea was to let the creatures get
ashore where the weapons of the defenders would be most effective.  And the
police could drive one or more back into the water, where the particle beams
and lasers would be least effective.  The creature recoiled, then came on,
right into the sonic waves.  Those police started to back up as the protoplasm
advanced, still playing their sonics on its front.

“Fire,” she
finally yelled, as her HUD showed that over half of each creature was out of
the water.

Not everything
fired at once.  One of the tanks got off the first shot, sending out a
hypervelocity round that struck the center of the creature, followed an instant
later by the pair of coaxial particle beams and the defensive lasers put to
offensive use.  The round struck at a thousand kilometers a second, accelerated
through the magrail cannon of the tank.  The wind of its passage pulled dust
and some discarded objects from the ground to fly after the round.  It blasted
through the membrane of the creature, vaporizing tons of protoplasm before the
small antimatter warhead detonated, destroying more of the creature.  Some of
the outer mass vaporized under the assault of the beam weapons.

The other tanks
and the infantry opened fire moments after.  More rounds penetrated into the
mass of the creatures, while hundreds of beam weapons ate into the substance of
the things.  Moments after the ground troops opened up the aerial vehicles came
down in a hover and started to send beams into the creatures from above.

The creatures
were all under attack now, the three in the center getting more attention than
the two on the flanks.  All were quivering as if in great pain, portions of
their mass dissolving into vapor.

“We’re going to
kill these things,” came the voice of a platoon leader over the com.

Indeed we are
,
thought the Colonel as the tank rocked again, sending another hypervelocity
shell at the creature.  The round struck with similar results as the last, and
the creature the tank was fighting was starting to look in sad shape.

What the
hell?
thought Suarez as the membrane of the creature started to change,
thickening, changing from a light red to almost a black color.  The particle
beams hitting the creature went through a change in their effect, heating the
areas they stuck to a dull red while no longer vaporizing the thing’s mass. 
The tank bucked again, and this time the round smacked into the membrane and
did the impossible, bouncing away, then detonating a microsecond later within
the city.

A wave of
molecular acid sprayed under high pressure from the front of the creature,
while streams squirted at the aerial vehicles above.  Several of the police and
a few militia went down as the acid burned through their light armor suits,
while two of the combat aircars spun out of the sky, one into the harbor, the
other onto the top of one of the creatures.  That aircar smoked and slid into
the creature, disappearing through the membrane to the cutoff screams of the
crew over the com.  And that was when the Colonel realized that this battle was
anything but won.

Next the
creatures all sprouted tentacles made of the same impossibly strong substance. 
A tentacle swept through the air and smack into a gunship, taking it down onto
the surface of the creature, where it was engulfed.  Other tentacles swept into
the troopers ashore, pulling them into the creature.  Dozens of cries came over
the com, cut off with finality as the militia were brought into the creature,
where they were attacked by the molecular acid the monster used to digest.

“Fall back,”
yelled Suarez, firing the tank commander’s laser at one of the tentacles to no
observable effect.

The militia
moved back from the waterfront, continuing to lay down fire that was
ineffective at best.  Hypervelocity rounds from the tanks were for the most
part bouncing away, their antimatter warheads detonating to the detriment of
the city and the defenders, one kiloton explosions sending out heat, radiation
and shrapnel to hit buildings and defenders.

“Get us the hell
out of here,” yelled Suarez over the com to the tank driver.

She took aim at
the thick tentacle that was coming at the tank.  Where the beam hit the thick
membrane glowed red, and steam rose from the strike.  The tank started to back
on its grabbers, but the tentacle reached around behind it and grasped, burning
its way into the ablative surface of the armor to get a better hold.  The tank
massed five hundred tons, the tentacle more than five thousand, but still it
struggled to move the vehicle that was pushing back with all the force it could
generate.  The Colonel could see what was coming and ducked into the turret of
the tank, cycling the heavy hatch closed overhead.  With a squelching sound the
tank was pulled into and through its membrane.

“How are we
holding up?” she asked nervously over the com.

“The tank is
sealed tight,” replied the driver, who was monitoring all the systems from his
forward compartment.

The armor is
thick and tough
, thought the Colonel, closing her eyes and saying a quick
prayer.  The creatures were supposed to have problems with modern materials. 
That hasn’t seemed to help the soldiers in their light armor, or those in
aerial vehicles, but neither the people or the aircars had the same temper of
armor as a tank.  Now the question was how to get out?

*     *     *

Jensen moved
through the water on her suit’s waterjets, hitting a hundred knots as she
skirted the edge of the creature she was following.

“All units.  Hit
them with sonics,” she ordered, activating the large units attached to both of
her forearms.  The water rippled under the assault of the waves of disruptive
sound, and the membrane of the target creature rippled and bent along with it. 
The creature recoiled a bit, though she knew that the damage had to be minimal.

The other suited
Constables, dolphins and humanoids, joined by some local dolphins, were all
adding their own sonic assault to the mix.  And
Argonaut
was focusing
all of the power of its fusion reactor through the sonic blaster units in its
nose.  Its target area actually rippled and burst into fragments that were
falling apart as they flew away from the bulk of the creature.

A call came
through the com, one of the dolphin constables warning off one of the
unprotected cetaceans.  From the tenor of the reply, followed by a squeal of
pain and terror, the dolphin was caught and dissolved by the carnivorous
creature they were battling.

The fight went
on for minutes, the suited constables, the submarine and their allies galling
the creatures but not doing any serious damage.  And then things changed, as
the membranes of the creatures thickened, toughened, and tentacles erupted from
bodies of the monsters.  A Constable screamed out as one of the tentacles
grabbed him and pulled him into the creature.  The screaming stopped, followed
by a string of profanity as the man tried to fight his way out.

Our suits are
tough enough
, she thought.  Their submersible combat suits were in a class
with heavy Marine and army battle armor. 
Still.

“Everyone back
off.  Keep hitting them, but try to avoid being caught.”

I’m not sure
we’re going to beat these things at this time and place
, she thought as she
moved back and continued to send sonic waves into the creature she was
fighting.  She was thinking they might need to lure them away from this
inhabited area where they could hit them with heavy weapons.  There was no way
they could handle medium sized antimatter warheads, was there?

*     *     *

The artillery
company was finally in place and opened fire.  One hundred millimeter shells
started to rain down on the creatures, their laser heads attempting to burn
into the membranes of the targets just before they struck and their warheads
detonated.  Some of the warheads contained small antimatter charges, others had
a mass of crystal matrix batteries that sent gigwatts of electricity into their
targets.  And still others hit and sent waves of sound into the creatures.  All
causing damage, but not enough to kill them.

The creatures
continued to move into the city.  First one, then another, levitated above the
ground, using some unknown force to counteract gravity and hover.  They
continued to attack the city, four of them levitating into the air flying for a
hundred meters, then coming down on top of groups of militia or police.  Those
in tanks, if they happened to be sealed, survived, while the rest were
dissolved away inside the
Gatherers.
  The fifth went into the air,
leveling off at five hundred meters and speeding toward the hill on which the
artillery was deployed.  As soon as it was over the artillery company it
dropped, adding the hundred and fifty-three militia and ten cannon to its store
of resources.

Before the
creature could get back into the air and seek another target it became the
target.  Three five hundred megawatt class lasers and a pair of particle beams
came down from above and struck the creature on five points on its body.  This
was a warship firing, only a system defense class frigate, but still ten times
the firepower of the reinforced militia battalion and police that the creatures
had been battling.  The thick tough membrane ruptured under the attention of
weapons made to penetrate meter thick armor made of supertough materials.  Tons
of the underlying protoplasm converted to superheated steam that destroyed ten
times its mass of surrounding tissue.

The
Gatherer
writhed
in agony, bounding into the air as it tried to escape the onslaught.  The
targeting systems of the frigate were up to the challenge, and the beams
continued to sear through the body of the creature as it frantically tried to
escape.  With the last of its strength if headed back toward the ocean, losing
mass the entire way as the naval gunfire continued to score.  It hit the water
twenty kilometers from the entrance to the bay that was the capital city’s
harbor.

The creature was
badly damaged, but not near death.  All of it, every gram, had to be killed for
it to really die.  The water protected it from lasers and particle beams that
turned water to steam, but could only penetrate several meters.  Once in the
water, still massing over a thousand tons, the
Gatherer
was sure that it
was now safe.  It continued with that view until the four kinetic weapons came
slashing through the water to strike it directly.  The heat and blasts of the
penetrators disrupted the remaining mass, and the creature was truly dead.  Its
last thoughts came through the quantum connection to its fellows, and the
collective consciousness realized that it was in serious trouble.

The remaining
creatures were almost panicked.  They had been on the cusp of leaving the
planet, spreading into the Galaxy.  If they had gotten out of this system and
went through another cycle in the next six systems, they would have reached the
point where they would have been difficult to stop.  Five more cycles and they
would have been all but unstoppable.  Just their misfortune that they had
awakened for the last feeding period to find  high tech species had colonized
it.  If the ship hadn’t entered the equation, they still might have won, but
now they were at risk of annihilation.

Going into the
water for safety was not a given, with the ability of the thing in orbit to
drop high energy weapons on them.  Staying on the land was also a non-starter,
since they were then targets for the beam weapons.  There was only one possible
solution, and the creatures immediately took the action needed to ensure that
at least one of them survived to carry on the species in this Galaxy.

Three of the
forms flowed together to form one enormous creature, one massing multiple
millions of tons.  It levitated into the air, heading for the outer atmosphere
at high acceleration, keeping itself between the remaining creature and the
ship above.  That last
Gatherer
headed out to sea, looking for the
deeper water where it could hide.  And within it was Colonel Suarez’ tank,
still engulfed in the mass of the creature.

*     *     *

“Kama,” yelled
Jensen over the com.  “I need an immediate pickup.”

The Master
Sergeant acknowledged and sped the
Argonaut
to the side of the Major,
taking her aboard.  Jensen shed her suit in the armory and ran to the bridge,
throwing herself into her command chair and looking out over the holo map that
was showing the entire scenario.

“Orders?” asked
Warrant Officer Zaya, looking back from her station.

“Follow that
smaller one,” ordered the Major, pointing at the creature that was cruising
over the ocean, heading for the deep.

“What about the
other one?” asked the Master Sergeant.

“That one’s not
our problem,” she replied, her eyes locked on a side screen that showed the
smaller creature on satellite view.   “Push it to the limit, Zaya.  I want to
be over it before it goes deep.”