“What?”
Natasha shrugged. “I think the third possibility is the correct one. These are Cephalopods—Cephalopod males. We found their queens, remember?”
“Oh sure, they were big and nasty as hell.”
“Right, but we never found the seeding males.”
“Huh? What are you talking about, girl? Every squid I’ve ever killed was a male—I think.”
She shook her head. “They weren’t the mating type, James. They were male the way worker ants are all female. They can’t actually bear young.”
I stared at her for a few long seconds. “You mean to tell me these things are grand-daddy squids? Kings of the Cephalopods?”
“That’s right. That’s what I think. They did call themselves a kingdom, remember? But all we ever found were the queens. Maybe the kings were out here on Green World the whole time.”
Chewing that over, I had to admit it could be true. After we’d won the war with the squids, we hadn’t spent decades studying them and figuring out their history. There hadn’t been time. We’d been in trouble with the Galactics and all sorts of other aliens straight-away. These days, in fact, the Cephalopods had been replaced in everyone’s mind by enemies like Rigel.
People always tended to focus on their current enemy when they were at war, to the exclusion of all else. Unfortunately, now that we were part of the frontier club of fledgling civilizations at the fringe of the known galaxy, we never did seem to catch a break. Times of long-lasting peace were just a faded memory for Earth.
-50-
After the last monster was driven off our island, people kind of figured the dome of hot ice that encapsulated us would… I don’t know, melt?
But it didn’t. The damned thing just sat up there making the sun look all weird and wavery. In fact, it kind of got real warm inside the dome after a while. The techs said that it was a greenhouse effect. Cut off from wind and rain, the temperature under the dome kept creeping up. The ocean got all weird, too. Not only was it full of dead monster-meat, there were no more waves, either. The whole mess was turning into a crock pot destined to cook up a nasty stew.
“Hmmm…” I said the morning after. “You know, those huge bodies are already smelling bad, and they’re going to get a lot worse after a while.”
“That’s right, they will,” Carlos said. He was standing next to me on the beach like he was my date or something. I guess there wasn’t all that much for a bio to do now that the battle was over. “I think they’re pretty stinky already.”
He was right. Nothing smells worse than seafood rotting on a beach. Things like giant squids always seemed to rot real fast, too.
Turning to look at Carlos, I frowned. “Why are you wandering around out here and pestering me anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be working long shifts in some revival chamber somewhere?”
“I would have been—but they aren’t reviving anyone here anymore. They’re reviving them up on Dominus.”
“Yeah? Is that because they don’t want to waste the effort when we’re trapped under glass?”
“Partly. But it’s also because the lifters took off with a lot of our revival machines. They only left us a few down here, and the raw materials aren’t going to last. They hauled the rest of them back up to the transport when things started to get weird down here. Didn’t you notice the lifters were gone?”
“Oh… yeah. I guess they would have used their anti-personnel cannons in the battle if they’d been sitting on the sand.”
“Right,” Carlos replied. “The lifter pilots bugged out when a freaking dome started rising out of the sea. We were busy playing kamikaze on the beach, so we missed it.”
“Ah-ha. I get it. They didn’t want to chance losing valuable machines. Three thousand troops are no big deal—but a few lifters and a half-dozen revival machines? Well, that’s real value right there.”
“You said it brother. At least the legion isn’t losing her most treasured equipment. That should take the edge off the corn-holing we received from these giant aliens—at least as far as the brass is concerned.”
We walked along the shore another dozen steps before I frowned at him again. “Hold on…how come you didn’t die in that battle?”
“Uh… well… I got away. The monster didn’t go for me.”
“Yeah, sure. What you mean is you ran off early, and you didn’t turn around until you made it to safety.”
“Well… come on, McGill. Cut me a break. I’m just a bio in pajamas on any battlefield. I couldn’t do anything against that monster, and you know it.”
“Yeah, that’s true. You’re forgiven.”
After a few more steps he looked at me with an odd expression. “Wait a minute—how come you’re alive, too? Almost no one else in our whole unit made it off that beach. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s no secret.”
“How’d you do it? Did you pick up your skirts and run screaming? I’d like to have seen that.”
The truth was, Carlos’ description was pretty accurate. I couldn’t confess like he had, however. Carlos had the biggest mouth in the unit. Not even a good killing would keep him quiet.
“I ran to help Manfred,” I lied proudly. “His unit was the next one down the beach, and the star-falls knocked out the squid attacking his troops.”
“Why help a unit with a dead monster when there’s a live one tearing up your own men?” Carlos was looking a mite suspicious. I knew I had to clamp that down right away.
I stopped walking, and my voice rose. My arms made big sweeping gestures toward the dead monsters nearby. “Because those things didn’t just die
