edge of barely open valves. Swimming against the steady flood of raw sewage she encountered a colony of large rodents, which scrambled out of her path while emitting high-pitched cries of alarm. The shrade was tempted, but passed them by, ignoring the possible food source, as she needed all of her stealth and speed to achieve her objectives. She did, however, mentally mark their location as a resource for later nourishment.
Finally reaching the main buried tank beneath the spaceport, the shrade encountered a maze of pipes leading up to the surface. After a few exploratory efforts, the shrade found a convenient exit.
In the men’s public restroom on the arrivals floor, the toilet in the third stall suddenly seemed to flush itself. Water erupted, bubbling and splashing the tiled floors. Whipping her head about, the shrade struggled to extricate herself from the tight confines of the sewer pipe. The toilet seat clattered and walls of the stall were sprayed with soiled water. The shrade paused her thrashing for a moment to listen. Sensing nothing, she continued her efforts, finally managing to grip the base of the toilet and pull herself through, escaping from the cold depths of the sewers. Sliding out underneath the door of the stall, she determined that the restroom was indeed empty.
With a ripple of sucking, popping sounds, she extruded twelve short stumpy legs on each side of her body. From beneath her large single eye a spreading array of tentacles blossomed. With a peculiar humping gait, she moved rapidly to the restroom door. Using her tentacles, the shrade opened the door and surveyed the scene in the terminal with her single optical orb. She peered out into the baggage-claim area, immediately noting the presence of numerous active vertebrates.
The spaceport was in fact a scene of furious activity. Armed vertebrates marched back and forth about the building, gesticulating and making loud sound modulations. This immediately confirmed that the vertebrates communicated primarily through sound and visually detectable movements. Even as she took in this information, the shrade transmitted the scene using the radio crystals located in her tail-section, thus forming a living video pick-up for the open receptors of the Parent.
From the nature of the activities of the vertebrates, it seemed clear that they were preparing for a defensive military operation. Logically then, the offspring could only deduce that the vertebrates were now aware of the invasion and their impending peril. Worse, they had obviously predicted that the spaceport was strategically a key target and therefore would be one of the first objectives of the attack. Further, the fact that the rest of the city appeared so tranquil suggested that the vertebrates were quite capable of subtlety themselves and were perhaps laying a trap for the forces of the Imperium.
Heavy disappointment came to the offspring and was relayed to the Parent at this news. They had greatly hoped to take the spaceport by surprise as easily as they had the outlying food production zones. Somehow, they had been inefficient, incomplete, in their efforts to close down all information of the invasion. It was obvious that the vertebrates were preparing to do battle. Surface observations wouldn’t be enough to counter this enemy’s operations. All major targets had to be penetrated and compromised by shrades if reconnaissance was to be relied upon.
This changed the objectives of the shrade’s mission. No longer was it so mission-critical that the shrade’s presence go undetected. Having completed her check upon the enemy state of readiness, the shrade propelled her wet body at a slapping gait toward the janitor’s door to the left of the stalls. Flattening herself and squeezing beneath the door, she found a ventilation duct in the janitor’s closet and removed the wire grate. She slithered into the open duct, vanishing into the depths of the terminal building.
Finding a bank of tentacle-thick glowing tubes, the shrade delicately wrapped her snake-like body around them. The tubes carried the spaceport’s data-net, one of the old-fashioned optical liquid networks that had gone out of use in most colonies. Due to budgetary restrictions imposed by the Colonial Senate, however, the system was still in place here. With an oily sucking sound the shrade exuded one egg shaped pod onto each of the slick- surfaced tubes. The moment they were in place, the glistening pods flattened themselves a bit and then punctured the tubes with their eight-tined data-forks. A few droplets of milky fluid dribbled into the darkness before the pods sealed the holes they had created and began soaking in data.
Transmitting at a very low frequency, the pods were quickly monitoring and relaying virtually all transmissions over the spaceport’s datanet. A steady information dump fed the Parent’s newly grown computers. It would take a considerable amount of time for all the information to be compiled, digested, cross-referenced and analyzed by the computers, they were really a bit young for this, but once the job was finished the Parent would have a diverse wealth of information concerning the enemy.
Late Friday morning Militia Dispatch finally got around to investigating the reports from Hofstetten of gunfire and screaming jaxes. A ground car pulled up at Dev’s place with militia officers Kwok and her partner Friedrich. The cruiser rolled up the gravel drive, engine idling softly.
“I don’t see anything,” said Friedrich, “let’s just call in and get back to town.”
Officer Kwok glanced over at her partner in disdain. She was the senior officer and Friedrich’s lack of respect for procedure often rubbed her the wrong way. “We’ll check it out, then go back.”
She stopped the cruiser in front of the house and they both got out. Friedrich climbed out with a grunt, grumbling, “damned waste of time.”
It was when they rounded the side of the house and saw the mess in the yard that they both became fully alert. Bloody tracks and the few bits of meat left by the trachs covered everything. An empty shoe lay on the porch steps.
“What happened?” demanded Kwok, dragging out her pistol.
Friedrich pulled his weapon out smoothly and stepped into the open, eyes sweeping the scene. “Can’t be just an early slaughter, too close to the breeding season. See the barn door? It’s wide open.”
“But where are all the jaxes?”
“Dev wouldn’t have sent his jaxes into the high pastures this time of year, not with all the landsharks hatching in the woods.”
Kwok nodded, heading toward the shoe on the porch. “The screen door’s been crashed in. It looks like the boy’s shoe, here. Call in and report. Request a backup cruiser.”
Friedrich tapped his earphone and called headquarters.
“Could be someone hurt in there. We have to go into the house-now,” said Kwok. She looked Friedrich in the eye; both were scared.
Together they entered the house, following the odd trail left by the killbeast the night before. The three- clawed holes in the kitchen tiles were particularly disturbing.
Neither of them saw the culus that had flattened itself out against the roof of the barn, camouflaged to match the color of the shingles. When they moved out of sight, the culus rose up and dived from the roof, disappearing into the forest.
Down in the cellar, the two officers and Sarah came within seconds of shooting one another in the dark.
Daddy ordered a second platter of roasted air-swimmers while Mudface picked at his first. The waiter took the order with a forced smile, tactfully waiting until he had turned away from the men before putting a perfumed hanky to his nose.
“I won’t have this kind of thing. I don’t like coming down here and there’s going to be hell to pay,” said Daddy. Bits of roasted meat jetted from his blubbery lips.
“Yeah,” said Mudface. He picked at the black scabs on his forehead. “Looks like she ran out on us.”
“At the very least she screwed the pooch and lost our shipment,” expounded Daddy, shaking a large forkful of meat at his son. “We can’t let people get the idea that we’re soft. Nobody pulls one over on the boys from Sharkstooth.”
“I kinda liked her though,” complained Mudface. “A young man has plans, Daddy.”
Anger brewed on Daddy’s face. His fatty jowls pulled down in deep folds. “I won’t have no backtalk from you, boy.”
“So we’re just gonna kill her?”
“No, we’re gonna do more than that,” said Daddy, his mood lifting. He munched another forkful of air- swimmer, then grinned. Dark flecks showed on his teeth. “First, we’re gonna have a little fun with our shotguns, some cameras and her pretty little behind. We need plenty of pictures to hand around to people who might be getting funny ideas.”
