Sitting like a spider at the center of a great web of glittering datastreams, Mai Lee was one of the first humans on the planet to see a culus. It overflew her estate during her afternoon meditation, skirting the village and slipping over the moat and the flame-pits to peruse the outer battlements. Although her palace and the surrounding fortifications had the appearance of being a primitive place, built along the lines of ancient earth fortresses, its defenses were far from outdated. The culus was detected even as it circled the village. While it glided up to the outer walls a camera tracked its every movement.
“I beg your Excellency’s pardon,” whispered a speaker hidden in the center of a new and exquisite flower arrangement crafted that very morning by the skalds of the palace.
“I am meditating,” said Mai Lee, floating in free fall over a gravity repeller. The mere fact that she didn’t screech at the disruptive voice emanating from the clustered orchids indicated her good mood. Ever since the activities of the castle’s legendary dragon the night before, she had felt a rare inner calm. A smile played over her lips at the memory of last night’s excesses. “I don’t wish to be disturbed.”
“May I explain the request, Excellency?” the orchids begged.
Mai Lee cracked one eye and sighed. “Speak.”
“The security drones have sighted a very odd intruder. It is currently examining the estate.”
Mai Lee frowned slightly. “Send out a detachment of the guard to capture the spy. I will witness the interrogation and execution at my leisure. Must I give every instruction personally?”
“Certainly not, Empress, but the situation is difficult. The intruder is not a man, but some form of living being that can fly.”
Mai Lee snapped erect, the gravity repeller easing her down to the floor automatically. “Put it through on the holo-plate.”
The chamber contained a large holo-plate, which dominated much of the floor space. Instantly, the decorative image of a tinkling waterfall and the three persimmon-colored hummingbirds that hovered over it vanished, replaced by a very different kind of flyer. The creature was shaped like a skate from the distant sea: it resembled an air-swimmer, but more flattened out and streamlined. It was a milky mottled brown in color with flapping wings and a hook-knife tail. A single orb on a flexible stalk roved over the landscape. While she watched it expertly wove its way through a copse of delicate gauzepines, soared over the flame-pits unconcernedly and then rose up to crest the outer walls.
“What are its dimensions?” Mai Lee demanded. Her heart accelerated in her chest, already she was thinking of a prelude to assassination. Could this be some kind of new scout from her Zimmerman enemies?
“The wingspan is something less than six feet. From the frontal eyestalk to the tip of its tail is just over four feet.”
She frowned; observing the creature as it slid around the courtyard, a dim shadow against the walls. “Wasn’t it brown a moment before? It looks like gray stone now.”
“Yes, it seems to automatically camouflage itself in flight, blending in with its surroundings. As a scout, it excels at its task. We only picked it up by accident.”
She felt sure these things had been watching her for months. Mai Lee felt her tension return, all the work of her lengthy meditation had been undone. Irritably, she ordered the beast stunned and brought to her council chambers beneath the castle. It appeared that she would have to begin sleeping in the bunkers beneath the castle again. As she watched the creature investigated the fountain, the very fountain from under which she had driven her battlesuit the night before. There was an intelligence evident in the thing’s manner, a sense of direction and purpose. She was sure that it was alien to Garm and to her experience. Utterly alien.
“Order the compliment of guards to return,” she said coming to a sudden decision. She had many enemies and consciously maintained a heavy tendency toward paranoia that had played a great role in keeping her alive for the past two centuries.
“They have almost reached the spaceport, your Excellency. General Steinbach has repeatedly signaled his impatience concerning their arrival.”
“The safety of the estate and my person overrides the importance of their current mission. Instruct him to proceed alone.”
The orchids acknowledged the commands and fell silent.
In the high atmosphere over the polar range, two heavy lifters each bearing a large compliment of ape-like shock troops reversed course and headed back to Slipape County.
In the courtyard of Mai Lee’s palace, three stunners fired, catching the culus and dropping it into the fountain. It plunged into the cold water and sank to the bottom. Moments later the underbelly of the culus exploded from the inside outward. In a flurry of motion a shrade appeared, birthed into the cold water from her partner’s digestive system. Swimming away from the billowing clouds of fluids that stained the clear water, the shrade was free. She popped her head above the water’s surface for just a split second to look around, and then quickly dove to the bottom of the pool. Finding a drain entrance, she wriggled inside and vanished.
Sometime later the shrade reappeared, popping out of a drainage pipe in the lower levels deep beneath the castle. Slapping unnoticed in the forgotten corners of the lower labyrinths, the shrade investigated the varied garbage of the vertebrates’ technological society. She spent only a few minutes indulging her genetic compulsions, rummaging about in heaps of burnt out memory modules, acid-leaking energy cells and ruptured data-liquid cabling. Soon, she managed to slip beneath a few doorways and entered the more frequented areas of the dungeons.
When she found the war machine, she knew she had made an important discovery. Standing two-thirds the height of a jugger, the gleaming hi-tech weapon stood out from the primitive feel of the dungeon itself. That the machine was no discard was clearly evidenced. Not a millimeter of its surface contained tarnish and the walls were festooned with tools and diagnostics equipment. The machine itself was open hatched and undergoing maintenance service by a squad of vertebrates, clearly technicians.
The shrade knew exultation. Here, at long last, was a clear example of the enemy’s greatest powers of war. To study the machine was worth the deaths of ten shrades.
The shrade reported her findings with a short blip of data to the Parent. Though she fairly quivered with curiosity, she contained her violent need to know. Fantasies of attacking the three service vertebrates and expunging them ran through her tactical brain, but she managed to restrain herself. Built into every successful scout was a good dose of caution and patience. Hiding herself among a stack of fuel cells, she bided her time.
Hours passed before the vertebrates finally left the fantastic machine unattended. Quickly humping forward, the shrade mounted one of the metal monster’s great legs. Nosing about inside, she discovered a myriad of wonders, all of which she catalogued and reported in coded transmissions.
A sound of approaching vertebrates warned her. She popped an optical organ just out of the hatch, eyeing their noisy approach. There were many of the vertebrates approaching, some of them armed and armored. It was too late, the shrade had over indulged herself-there was no way to slip out. She coiled herself inside the war machine, preparing to kill as many of the soft technicians as she could.
Another idea occurred though, concerning the numerous open hatches inside the war machine. Could she possibly hide inside the thing? Wriggling and scraping herself severely, she managed to slip into one of the hatches and seal herself in. Waiting inside to be discovered, she began to regret her hasty decision. How could the enemy’s diagnostics not discover her immediately? She chided herself for being overly concerned with her own survival.
Outside, the sounds of the vertebrates rose in level, and then dropped away again. The shrade inside knew great relief. Soon, she judged that they had all left her alone again with the great machine.
Surprised at her own good fortune, she made to stealthily exit, but couldn’t. Try as she might, the hatch wouldn’t open. She was jammed in tight.
Scampering larvae simply thronged the nest. The Parent grunted and heaved, depositing another egg into the waiting arms of a clittering hest. Three large, cavorting killbeast larvae chased a smaller one, probably a hest or a culus-it was difficult to tell them apart in the larvae stage-up onto her birthing throne, across her painfully swollen chambers and down the other side. An involuntary hissing sound of discomfort and exasperation escaped from her food tube. It was simply too much for one Parent, all this birthing. Already she had laid an estimated five thousand eight hundred eggs since arriving on the target world. Developmentally, the offspring were now broken
