I nodded, seeing her point. I shut up and let her do her work. She was, after all, doing it right.
About half an hour later, the battle was over. We’d killed more than half of them and driven the rest away. There was some ragged cheering over this victory, but it was half-hearted at best. Most of our troops were dead.
“The soldiers on the beaches were useless,” Jenny said. “They were helpless. It was hard to watch.”
“Nonsense!” I told her. “They did their job: running interference for you and your star-falls. These monsters are tough, and they’re smart, but they don’t seem to be master strategists.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what would you have done if you were their commander? I would have ordered every one of them to charge toward the center of the island. They should have rushed your position and taken out this artillery emplacement at all costs. If they’d managed that, they could have won.”
She thought about that, and she nodded. “So, you’re saying the troops were important? To distract the enemy away from us?”
“That’s right. They weren’t cannon-fodder, they were just plain fodder. They got eaten on the front lines so you could keep your barrages coming uninterrupted.”
Jenny had to agree with me, but she turned down all my offers of companionship and a friendly drink to victory. She was too tired and shaken for any kind celebrating.
Shrugging, I headed down toward the main camps where the troops were slowly being revived one at a time. I wondered if some of them would rather have stayed dead until this choice assignment was only a distant memory.
Soon I found Graves—or rather, he found me.
“Survived the beaches, did you?” he asked.
“That’s right, Primus. Jenny took down the monster that was eating my unit. She did it just in time, too.”
Graves squinted at me. I was, of course, editing the facts to my liking. He clearly didn’t entirely believe me, but he was too tired and beaten to check up on my story, so he let it go.
“All right,” he said, sighing heavily. “Not since Barnard’s Star has any legion faced megafauna so large and vicious. Do you remember that campaign, McGill?”
“Uh… no sir. I think that one was before my time.”
“Right… right. Anyway, the kraken aren’t what concerns me the most now. I’m worried about that dome. It’s not going away.”
“Uh… did you say, kraken, sir? What’s a kraken?”
He pointed at the nearest steaming lump of meat. That big-boy was stretched out in the landing area for the lifters. It was a good thing that our lifters were back up in orbit with Dominus. If they’d been grounded here under the dome—well, they’d probably have been destroyed.
“A kraken is one of those things. A sea monster, described more or less as a giant tentacled beast from the depths. They were considered mythical, of course—until today.”
“Huh… that’s interesting. Any analysis as to what these things are?”
“I just told you, McGill. Weren’t you listening?”
“I sure was. You said they were kraken. But what are they genetically? What are these monsters related to?”
He blinked at me for a few seconds. “Are you suggesting these things are something the Clavers cooked-up? Do you happen to have inside information as to their origins?”
“Hell no. I just thought maybe we should do some xeno-analysis, that’s all.”
He viewed me suspiciously. “We’ve been doing that, of course. Seeing as your unit is pretty much wiped out, why don’t you stop pestering me and go find Natasha. She’s working on the team to do the genetic isolation.”
“Figures. Thanks, Primus.”
I tossed him a lazy salute and wandered the island. I found a tent full of nerds and walked inside. People tossed me alarmed stares, but no one challenged me. Sometimes it was nice to be a mean-looking officer. People gave you a lot less grief.
“James?” Natasha asked when I got her attention away from a microscope. “What are you doing here?”
“Primus Graves ordered me to come down and supervise the genetic tracing efforts.”
She snorted. She didn’t believe me, but she was willing to go along with my boast and show me what they’d found out so far.
“We’re only sure of one thing,” she said after several minutes of nerd-talk about nucleotides and nematodes—or something like that. “These monsters are related to Cephalopods.”
“You mean our very own space-squids?”
“That’s right. The DNA is conclusive. It’s not just due to general co-evolution, either. The match is too close for that.”
“So they didn’t simply grow here natural-like? They were brought here? What? Did they invade this world on behalf of the old Cephalopod Kingdom?”
“Maybe. Either that, or this is the real homeworld of the Cephalopods in the first place. We never did learn all there was to know about that species. Their homeworld was so badly damaged during the war… well, you’ve heard about the antimatter bombs and all, I’m sure. It’s a shameful stain that will hang over Earth forever.”
“Uh… it will?”
“Of course, James. Billions of their civilians died. It was awful.”
“Yeah… right.”
My memories of that war were quite different than Natasha’s. I’d delivered an A-bomb to the squid homeworld personally, and I’d been proud to do it. In a single stroke, Earth had won the war and put on the best fireworks show I’d ever witnessed at the same time. In fact, I still considered that bombing to be one of my proudest achievements.
Some of the details were still classified, however, and I didn’t want to give anything away about my involvement. I sensed Natasha might take it the wrong way.
“Let’s get back to this DNA link. What’s your best theory?”
She shrugged. “There are only three possibilities, really. Either these monsters were bred by the
