The Quag

TThis short story is part of a forthcoming collection called ORIGINS, set in the Legends of the Known Arc universe. If you enjoy it, please share and comment.

A visit by an anthropologist to an endangered village on the planet Ghast  reveals an ugly truth about  the politics of the Known Arc.

“The lifespan of a Ghast female is fifteen to twenty Earth years, mostly spent in the humanoid larval state. This seems like a paltry sum until you consider the rumors of the klanschaed. If correct, and the female Ghast is born with the memories of her matrilineal ancestors intact, then you could argue that the lifespan of a female Ghast is damn near infinite. An unbroken chain of memory from her mother and her mother’s mother, all the way back to the dawn of sentience.”

The anthropologist leaned back against the thin wall of the hut. “If klanschaed is real, death to a Ghast is an occurrence on par with an illness for a human. The flu, say. They’re uncomfortable and disabled for a short period, but soon thereafter they’re back in business, in a brand-new youthful body.”

The pilot wasn’t really listening. The anthropologist had been droning on for more than an hour. Outside the hut, the sounds of nature had grown louder and fiercer as the night established itself across the quag. 

The anthropologist noticed the pilot’s lack of attention and chuckled. He offered his flask. “Want some more?”

The pilot held out his metal cup. The anthropologist poured a measure, then took a shallow sip directly from the flask. He grimaced and wiped his mouth, glancing at the open window as some nearby quag creature made a watery, snuffling sound. The walls of the hut were uncomfortably thin, unbelievably so considering the nature of the beasts that slithered and crawled outside. They both listened as the snuffling creature passed below the spindly wooden piers that held the hut aloft.

“Are there snakes on Ghast?” asked the pilot.

The anthropologist chuckled darkly. “No. No snakes. It’s an entire world of invertebrates, like Betelose, except that life here evolved in a far more competitive natural environment.” He sipped his flask again. “Wait until we get outside tomorrow and walk to the village, you’ll see. A python or anaconda wouldn’t last five minutes in the quag.”

The pilot nodded. Something tickled his forehead. He swatted it frantically, then felt relief when he realized it was a droplet of sweat and not some vicious Ghastly gnat come to infect him with a brain parasite or some such awfulness. “Gesus, how can you stand this minging humidity? I can barely breath.”

The anthropologist shrugged. “It’s worse in the monsoon season. Two months from now you won’t be able to survive here at all. At the height of the monsoon, the air this close to the equator is so supersaturated with water vapor it can damn near drown you, not to mention the spore count is so high that your lungs would be choked with fungus after your third breath. Also, most of the really awful ghastlies are hibernating now. Once the temperature goes up and the rain starts, this place gets really nasty.”

“It’s hard to believe that anything could hibernate in this heat,” said the pilot.

“It’s all relative. The dry season on Ghast is the equivalent of an artic winter on Earth.  The sunny days and lack of rain are inhospitable to all but the hardiest critters of the quag. Most of them are buried in the mud right now, sleeping, waiting for the monsoons.”

The sound of the snuffling creature diminished as it moved away. In the distance, something like a bird made a series of shrill, barking chirps. The pilot raised the metal cup to his lips, took a drink. The whisky warmed his throat, but did nothing to allay his discomfort. He eyed the fibrous slats that made up the walls, some of which were so loosely plaited that he could stick his finger through the gaps.  “I didn’t know we’d be sleeping in a gods-damned wooden hut. I figured you had a bunker out here. Don’t the wee little nasties crawl in through the holes?”

“Sometimes,” admitted the anthropologist. “But don’t worry. I built this hut from a jaogog tree, which is the same wood the locals use for their stilt-villages. The creepy-crawlies know not to climb the trunk of a jaogog.”

“Why is that?”

The anthropologist chuckled again. “Even the trees on Ghast can be pretty fucking vicious.”

The pilot sighed. He was beginning to regret accepting the anthropologist’s invitation to spend the night at a field station. “How long do you stay out here in the bush?”

“As much as possible. Like I said, you can only survive here for a couple of months in the dry season, so I try to get as much bush time as possible. The clan villages are disappearing so fast that every moment I get to spend in the quag is important. In ten years, there won’t be a quag village left on this entire planet. The entire hai fey culture will be extinct.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

The anthropologist made a regretful nod. “When a snake charmer on the streets of Delhi pulls the fangs from a cobra, it’s not a cobra anymore. It goes from being a fierce and proud natural predator to a pathetic novelty in a street show for tourists.”

“Yeah, but without its fangs it can’t bite you.”

“No, it can’t. But a healthy ecosystem needs predators to stay healthy. If you defang all the cobras, then the rats take over.”

“That’s good if you’re a rat,” the pilot pointed out.

“Yes, it’s great until overpopulation means the rats destroy their natural resources and turn on each other.”

The pilot scoffed. “So you’re sayin’ that the Known Arc needs the Ghasts? To keep the human population low? Are you serious?”

“Of course not. All I’m saying is that as an anthropologist I believe it’s important to document the Ghast native culture before it’s gone forever. As much as we may fear the cobra, there’s much we can learn from it.”

A long silence ensued. The anthropologist’s cot squeaked as he shifted to a more comfortable position. “Tomorrow morning we’ll visit the principle village of the Klurgh clan, or what’s left of it.”

“Seriously? Is it safe? They won’t try to get revenge for what happened?”

“It was an AON purity militia that killed their clan-mother. If they thought we were AON, we’d already be dead. I guarantee they saw us arrive. Don’t worry, they know me.”

“They don’t hate all humans?”

“Not exactly. It’s complicated. They see through a clan lens, not a xenoracial lens. I’ve made it clear that I do not belong to the AON Party, and I hate them as much as they do. That makes me a friend.” He chuckled. “An uneasy friend, to be sure, but at least they won’t eat me.”

“Better not say that back at the spaceport bar,” warned the pilot.

“What, that I hate the AON? That I think they’re a bunch of xenophobic genocidal religious bigots?” A flush of real anger darkened the anthropologist’s face. “Mark my words. The AON is more dangerous to humanity than the Ghast. Remember what I said about the cobras and the rats? When there’s nobody left but the rats, they’ll eat each other. It’s the same with these fucking political parties. The AON and their One Voice racial purity bullshit sounds noble, but it’s just a political front for bullies and thugs. At least the Ghast are honest about things. A Ghast never lies. That’s why they can’t comprehend us at all.”

“They eat people,” the pilot pointed out.

“Yes they do. We’re quite tasty, apparently. Just remember, we eat shellfish and lobster, which are the Earth equivalents of their phyla.”

“A lobster’s not a sentient being.”

“No, and from the perspective of most Ghast, we aren’t sentient, either. They view sentience and self-awareness from a very different lens, and that’s what fascinates me. It’s why I’m here.” He paused, looked thoughtful. “I believe we can learn about ourselves by understanding how others see us. For example, the Ghasts know we humans have higher-order brains. They know we have language and the ability to self-organize. They appreciate our knack for building industrial societies. But for some reason, they don’t think we’re self-aware. I believe it has something to do with the klanschaed. If they really do have clan memories that reach back ten thousands years, then what we’re dealing with here is essentially a race of immortals. The concept of self-awareness to an immortal being would be quite different than ours. If my suspicions are correct, to a Ghast, our lives would seem entirely inconsequential, just as the life of a lobster means nothing to us.”

Something thudded against one of the hut’s piers, hard enough that the entire structure wobbled. The pilot grabbed the edge of his cot, felt for his sidearm, which of course he’d left back at the church mission. No guns allowed, which was the fucking silliest rule in the whole gods-damned Known Arc. Of all the places a man should carry a gun, Ghast would be first on his list. He was beginning to regret letting his curiosity get the better of him, but when the anthropologist, whom he’d befriended during the flight to Ghast, had offered him a taste of bush life in the quag, his more adventurous impulse had accepted without a second thought. Visiting the quag wasn’t something a tourist could do, especially with all the recent violence.

He waited in silence, watching the anthropologist’s face for an indication of how scared he should be. “Get used to it,” the man told him. “It goes on all night. It’s probably just a swamp-mug grazing on the razorleaf. A big one could knock the hut over, but the big ones usually don’t come this close to a village.”

“I’m startin’ to believe I won’t get much sleep tonight, will I?”

“No, probably not. If it makes you feel any better, if the hut gets knocked down you won’t last sixty seconds, so you won’t suffer for very long.”

“Should I sleep in my bugsuit?”

The anthropologist smiled. “You can if you like. It’ll just delay the inevitable, though. Personally, I’d rather go fast than wait while the quag-beasties gnaw through my bugsuit.”

“You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“Mostly. Listen, don’t worry. I’ve spent the entire dry season for the last two years in this hut, and I still have all my extremities. The biggest worry here are the spores and microbes, but you’ve had your inoculations. Personally, I’m impressed that you wanted to come. Not many people have a burning desire to spend the night in a quag-hut. No matter what happens, you’ll have a great story to tell your grandkids one day.”

“If I survive the night.”

“Yeah. If you survive the night.” He held out the flask, wiggled it from side to side. “More?”

“Please.”

It was the most welcome sunrise of his life, and by far the noisiest, which was really saying something given the volume from the nocturnal quag-dwellers over the past nine hours. The anthropologist had given him earplugs when they’d retired for the night, but he hadn’t used them, preferring instead to stay as alert as possible. The deafening cacophony had cranked up for real about an hour after darkness had set in. It had prevented further conversation, so they had both retired.

The pilot had lain in his cot with his eyes wide open, listening to the chorus of creatures, trying to pick out individual voices from the mass of sound. Every so often, as the anthropologist had warned, the hut quivered as a quag-creature bumped against one of the piers. Once, something heavy had even landed on the roof, prompting an hour-long, fear-filled vigil during which he’d stared at the ceiling, waiting for some awful monster to drop through the thin layers of razorleaf fronds.

His eyes had still been open at the first yellow light of dawn, and he’d been greatly relieved when the anthropologist had stirred and yawned and stretched, apparently the recipient of an unconcerned night’s sleep.

After a breakfast of instant coffee and mealbars, supplemented with a local jerky the anthropologist insisted he must try and that tasted like candied pork, they donned their bugsuits and set out on foot for the village, leaving the rented aero parked in the clearing next to the hut.

“Okay, pay attention and watch your footing. The Ghast make these trails for themselves, not humans. They call them koihaj, which translates roughly to trembling road. There’s nothing beneath them but mud and slime and quagworms, and if you fall off, you’re in trouble. Understood? Stay in the middle of the path where it’s thickest, and watch out for the briar traps.”

They walked for almost thirty minutes as the sun rose in the yellow sky. The bush gradually thinned, the razorgrass and prickle-trees giving way to a vast and swampy field covered by a thick mat of leafless vines. Narrow waterways crisscrossed the fields in a pattern that was obviously artificial.

Every three or four meters the path of woven vegetation was interrupted by a strip of spiny thorns as long as his fingers. According to the anthropologist, these were designed to stop the quag-life, most of which slithered on its belly, from using the trails. The pilot stepped over one such thorny barrier, carefully keeping his balance as the floating pathway sagged beneath his weight.

The anthropologist suddenly stopped and held up a warning hand. He pointed to something in one of the waterways, a rippling distortion that indicated something big, moving fast beneath the surface of the narrow channel. He whispered, “Wait here and let it pass.”

The pilot matched the anthropologist’s whisper. “What is it?”

“I have no idea. It could be a weaverfish, which are mostly harmless, or it could be a dozen other things which aren’t. Don’t move, and don’t talk. Some of the big carnivores can sense vibrations in the koihaj.”

The water was as black and thick as engine oil. Whatever it was, the creature ignored them, passing languidly as they watched. Eventually, the anthropologist sighed, relaxed. He gestured around.

“These are agricultural fields. This plant is called tesh. It’s a swamp-vine that grows incredibly fast in the dry season, as much as a meter per day. They say each individual strand can grow to more than a kilometer in length. They use it for almost everything. They grind it to make a mush that the males bake into flatbread. They weave it into clothing. They make rope and weapons. This path is made from it. During the dark ages before the Olid Contact, tesh-farming was the basis for the entire economy of the quag.”

The pilot wasn’t listening. Up ahead he could see the village as a nightmare collection of tall, spindly structures like the anthropologist’s hut, each connected to the others by a web of hanging bridges and catwalks. Now he understood why the quag was the last bastion of ancient Ghast culture. In the quag, you never walk on solid ground because there isn’t any. It is so inaccessible, so inimical to humans that the church’s redemption teams have stayed away, preferring to deal with clans from the mountains and plains and leave the violent quag-clans for last.

 Several male Ghast were already working the tesh fields in their flatboats. They ignored the anthropologist and his guest, to the pilot’s great relief. The anthropologist didn’t greet them, didn’t look at them. The pilot followed suit, but it was hard not to stare. Ghasts were, after all, ghastly, as if the gods had taken a poll of every child’s scariest nightmare monsters and combined their most repulsive attributes into a single, horrifying creature. Every aspect was disturbing, from their appearance to their awful smell to the way they moved. They were killing machines, evolved to survive on the Known Arc’s most environmentally-hostile planet. They’d been at war with the rest of the Arc since they’d emerged from the dark ages following the Cataclysm. They’d brutally enslaved the Whan planets with the assistance of the Olids, who’d gladly provided starships, advanced weaponry and logistical support in exchange for a cut of the lucrative agricultural trade from the Whanworlds.

The pilot knew the history. When the Olids made Contact with Earth two centuries ago, humanity’s abrupt introduction to the galactic stage had completely upset the balance of power. The rediscovery of mankind’s ancient homeworld had energized the Cataclyst Church. With the support of the church, the fast-growing Solar Alliance of Earth and her colony planets had embarked on a military campaign to free the Whanworlds from a thousand years of Ghast enslavement. In a series of bloody conflicts, the Solar Alliance had beaten the Ghasts back to their homeworld.

In the aftermath of their defeat the clan leaders had been purged and practice of the horrific hai fey had been declared immoral and corrupt. For the past decade since the end of conflicts, the Redemption and Assimilation program had been hard at work to bring the entire Ghast population into the loving folds of the church, forcing them into urbanized Redemption Centers where they would learn the ways of the civilized world.

The Ghasts had resisted, of course, and in the first few years the death toll from the Redemption Centers had been regrettably high. Almost half of the population had been declared unredeemable and been rectified by the purity squads. As the bad apples had been plucked from the tree, however, new blossoms had sprouted as the Ghast children were indoctrinated into the light and love of the church’s grace. While the Ghasts would likely never be completely docile, at least the worst of the insurgency was gone. These days, the only remaining practitioners of hai fey culture were the remote clans of the quag, the vast and inhospitable wetlands of the planet’s equatorial regions.

It didn’t take a trained eye to see that something was wrong with the village. Many of the huts had toppled and were half-sunk into the quag. The spiderweb of hanging bridges and walkways was tangled and broken. The tesh fields immediately surrounding the village were blackened by fire.

“It happened four days ago. They came in areos,” explained the anthropologist. “They hit the village from the air, then landed and killed the clan mother. They burned the egg cache and slaughtered almost all the brood larvae. This village will never recover. Even if they manage to breed a new clan mother, the R&A people will eventually show up and take the survivors to a Redemption Center.”

The pain in the anthropologist’s voice was evident, but the pilot felt no empathy. The work of the church was often brutal, but what alternative was there to pacify backwards and violent races like the Ghast?

Nobody greeted their arrival, though the pilot could hear muffled alien conversations from the huts they passed, and several times saw slimy eyepods peeking over window sills and around open doorframes. The village was built upon a thick and ancient mat of tesh, carefully tended and bordered all the way around with tall protective barriers of thorns. From what he could tell, about a third of the huts still stood. The others lay broken and burned in great splintered tangles.

The characteristic Ghast body odor, so much like human vomit, pervaded the air and the pilot fought not to gag. There were other odors here, too, almost all overpowered by the stench of stale, wet ashes. The anthropologist was silent, his jaw clenched as he surveyed the burned and toppled huts.

The sun had risen a handsbreadth above the low horizon and the temperature was already soaring. The thin fabric of the bugsuit wicked away his sweat and protected him from the fierce ultraviolet rays of Ghast’s blue-white sun, but it also amplified the heat. He took a sip from the built-in water tube and pulled the hood tighter around his face, extending the visor to keep the glare from his eyes.

It was hard to believe so many Ghasts still lived in such squalor. They were an advanced, industrialized, spacefaring race. He’d seen their cities, their factories. Their maze-like metal cities weren’t pretty to human eyes, but they were a damn sight better than this place. It was their crazy hai fey culture. Before the Conflicts and the occupation, all Ghasts, without exception, had been born in villages like this. They spent their short larval childhoods learning to hunt, gather and farm. For the few that survived the hai fey, it wasn’t until they reached adolescence that they even became aware of modern technology.

The anthropologist stopped and looked up at one of the standing huts. He threw his hood back, revealing a balding and sunburned scalp. He called out, “Bess?”

The hut shook slightly as something moved inside, but there was no answer.

“Bess? I have someone I want you to meet. Can we come inside?”

Inside? The pilot felt a thrill of panic. The anthropologist wanted to go inside a Ghast quag-hut?

“It’s okay,” called out the anthropologist. “He’s not with the church and he’s not AON. He’s a guild transport pilot. He flies starships.”

The fabric material covering the door opened slightly and several pairs of eyepods appeared around the doorframe. The anthropologist smiled. “His name is Wiley Theron. He wants to meet you. Hai fey cumma gu’tak hulu’us.”

“Gu’tak, hulu’us,” came the response in a hissing, high-pitched voice. The fabric opened wider.

The anthropologist nodded. “She’s inviting you in. Move slowly. Don’t smile, they see it as a sign of aggression. Don’t touch any of the children. Keep your hands by your sides. Got it?”

“You’re sure about this?”

The anthropologist nodded. “You’ll be fine. They know me. Don’t hesitate, it’s insulting to them. Just go. I’m right behind you.”

Sunlight filtered through the wall-slats and painted the room in horizontal bands of light. There were seven Ghasts inside, six huddled in a cluster in one corner, one standing near the center of the floor next to a basket of something gelatinous. They were all small, one-third-scale versions of the adult Ghasts he’d seen before.

The anthropologist moved to his side. “These are the only surviving female larvae from the village brood. Under normal circumstances, in a few years one of them would metamorphose into the new clan mother, and the rest would pupate into egg-producers.” He pointed to the lone figure in the center of the room. “Bess’Klurgh here is the only one who speaks English. She’s quite the student.”

The pilot examined the alien. It waggled its eyepods at him. Something drooled out of its mouth and dropped to the floor. The others were drooling, too. It was disgusting. Every fiber of his being vibrated with the desire to leave. There was nothing cute about a Ghast child.

Even though its toxin sacs and battle spurs were underdeveloped and it hadn’t yet grown the famous retractable claws, Bess was terrifying. The squirming palps around its mandibles reminded him of a cuttlefish and the slimy eyestalks made him think of a snail. Like most of its siblings, its carapace was purple, decorated with painted designs of blue and green he recognized as the flowers he’d seen growing in the prickle-trees.

“Jugug mahny’ya,” said the child. He recognized the Ghast phrase of greeting, which according to barroom rumor meant, “I probably won’t kill you today, motherfucker.”

“Jugug mahny’yug,” said the anthropologist. “I hope you are well, Bess. I’ve brought you and your sisters a gift.”

At his announcement the huddle of Ghasts in the corner broke apart and surrounded them, eyestalks waving eagerly. The anthropologist unlimbered his bugsuit pack and opened it, drawing out a bundle of what looked like colorful drinking straws. “These are sugar sticks that Earth children eat. They are a treat. Open one end and taste what’s inside. I think you’ll like it.”

The others looked to Bess. She accepted the straws from the anthropologist and distributed them to her siblings. Their four-fingered hands looked clumsy, so he was surprised by their dexterity at opening the straws. They had more finger joints than humans.

In the center of the hut was a ring of woven material containing a stained wooden platter. On it was a mass of wet goo that looked alarmingly like the intestines of some large mammalian animal. During the Conflicts, the pilot knew, the Ghasts had eaten the human dead of the battlefield, and any captives they took ended up as food-pulp for the clan-mothers. He wondered what sort of animal had produced the pile of guts in front of him.

Bess held the straw up to what he assumed was its nose, then touched it with one of its mouth palps. Both its eyestalks suddenly went erect, and it said, in perfect, unaccented English. “This is very delicious, Henri. Thank you.”

Hearing the voice of a little human girl come out of the monster was disconcerting. The pilot wondered how it formed the sounds and syllables without a tongue or lips.

“You’re very welcome,” said the anthropologist. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring more, but the authorities check my bags when I leave the R&A center. They want to make sure I’m not bringing you a laser rifle or a box of grenades.”

The Ghast made a crackling noise with its mandibles which was echoed by its siblings. Laughter?

The anthropologist gestured toward the pilot. “Tell Theron about the AON raid. About what happened to the village.”

One of the other little monsters sneezed, apparently having inhaled some of the powder from its sugar stick. The others chittered and made bobbing motions with their eyestalks.

The one called Bess moved to the doorway. “Come, Mr. Theron. I will show you.”

The pilot had seen photos of Ghast egg-hives, so he recognized what remained of the mound of dried mud at the center of the village. It had mostly collapsed, and there had been no attempt to repair it.

“They dropped hand grenades from their aero,” the Ghast said in its little-girl voice. “They had a laser rifle they used to kill anything that moved.”

“Hand grenades?”

“They rented a civilian aero from the shuttleport,” said the anthropologist. “I don’t know how they smuggled grenades through customs, not to mention a gods-damned laser rifle. Once they’d picked off all the adults from the air and cracked through the shell of the egg-hive with their grenades, they landed and went inside and butchered the clan-mother. They poured fuel on the egg-mothers and burned them alive, along with all the eggs.”

“There were four of them,” said the Ghast. “We killed one, but the others escaped. Come, see.”

The Ghast led them across the scorched mat of tesh and through an opening blasted in the high ring of thorns that had protected the egg-hive. Ornate decorations had once been molded into the dried mud of the hive, and some were still visible in the remains. The stench of burned vegetation and putrid, rotting meat was overwhelming. Something white and puffy, like a dog-sized maggot, lay half in, half out of the mud.

“I don’t want to go any closer,” said the pilot.

“You need to see what happened here,” prompted the anthropologist in a gentle voice. “What those AON bastards are capable of.”

“I don’t want to go closer,” the pilot repeated stridently. A noise caused him to turn and look back. Behind him, the other children had gathered, and behind them were three full-grown Ghast males, huge and threatening, their carapaces smeared with bright, angry pigments that looked like warpaint.

“Who are the monsters here, Theron?” prompted the anthropologist. “Us, or the Ghast?”

The anthropologist turned away to study the remains of the hive. Swarms of flies hovered around the pale maggot-thing. Was it the remains of an egg, or perhaps part of one of the egg-mothers? The pilot didn’t want to know.

“Bess’Klurgh is only two years old, Theron,” murmured the anthropologist, too low for the aliens to hear. “Two years old. A human child would barely be walking and might have the vocabulary of fifty simple words. Bess speaks English better than you or me. I believe it’s because of the klanschaed, the race memories. I suspect that one of her recent ancestors spoke English. Even at this young age she’s already started to recall her ancestral memories, though I don’t think she’s old enough yet to fully understand the process.” He waved his hands over the awful scene. “This looks primitive to you and me, but you must never forget that the Ghasts were interplanetary warlords long before the Etruscans founded the village that would later become Rome. Some of those memories are likely still bubbling around in her little brain.”

The pilot didn’t understand why the anthropologist was talking this way, and he didn’t care. Sweat poured down his neck inside the bugsuit’s hood. Despite the heat he pulled the respirator filter over his mouth and nose, hoping it would allay some of the smell.

The child called Bess regarded him. “Henri says that more men will come soon to take us all to a Redemption Center. Is that true?”

The pilot eyed the three adult Ghasts, who had not moved. “Um, I don’t know anything about that. I’m just a pilot.”

Bess waved her eyestalks. “I won’t go. None of us will. We will kill any church men who come here. Tell them if you see them.”

“Um, I don’t… I…”

“We’ll tell them, though they won’t listen,” said the anthropologist. “You need to move deeper into the quag before you select a new clan-mother and build a new egg-hive.”

“It won’t matter,” said Bess. “They have sensors on their starships that can see us from orbit. We can’t get away. All we can do is kill them if they come.”

The anthropologist sighed. “I’m so sorry, Bess.”

The small Ghast nodded. “Thank you for the candy, Henri.”

Back at the anthropologist’s hut, the pilot accepted the offered flask and took a deep, burning draft of whiskey.

“I’m supposed to study them and not get involved,” said the anthropologist. “But gods-damn it, when I see shit like what happened to the village it makes me want to take up arms in their defense.”

“You’d be singing a different tune if they’d occupied Earth during the Conflicts and turned us all into their slaves.”

“It was one thing fighting the Ghast warfleet during the Conflicts, but it’s something entirely different for political thugs to murder Ghast civilians in a tiny village in a swamp. Of course I don’t want the Ghasts running the Known Arc, but I don’t think its right to completely destroy their ancient culture, either.”

The pilot raised his eyebrows. “Better not let your priest hear you talking like that.”

“I don’t give a shit any more. Somebody needs to speak out. If things keep going the way they are, the AON racial-purity bullshit will eventually be accepted by the mainstream, and you’ll see pogroms on every non-human world.”

“Somebody’s got to be in charge,” said the pilot. “I’m okay with it being Earth.”

“Even if it means genocide?”

The pilot shrugged. “Sometimes it comes down to them or us. Survival of the fittest, you know. It’s science.”

The anthropologist gave him a hard look. “Survival of the fittest, eh? Let me ask you, if you put a man and a Ghast into a room together and told them only the fittest could survive, which do you think would still be alive after sixty seconds?”

“Depends on who was holding the rifle,” chuckled the pilot.

“No, seriously. What you’re talking about is the ultimate outcome of theory of evolution. Of all the races in the Known Arc, which is the fittest for survival?”

“We beat the Ghasts, remember?”

“We only beat the Ghasts because the Olids saw that we were a potentially more lucrative trading partner. They sold us the weapons that they normally would’ve given to the Ghasts.”

“So what? We won the wars, which means we’re the fittest.”

“Not at all. By your logic I would argue that the Olids are the fittest. They’re the ones who win no matter what war is being fought. They never pick up weapons. They never wield obvious power, and yet, their invisible empire rules us all.”

“That’s changing. Just look at the Solar Alliance and the Solar Guard. The human fleet is the biggest in the Known Arc. Even the Olids are afraid of us.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it. The Olids have always played the long game. For the past few hundred years, it served their purposes to let the Ghasts run things. Now it seems to be in their best interest to let the human upstarts take over for a while.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it? What if I told you that the AON rise to power in Earth politics was engineered by the Olids? Any time they see a potential competitor gain too much influence, they work behind the scenes to sow mistrust and internal strife. I think they’re starting to realize Earth is a rising threat, so they’re quietly spreading lies and misinformation, all the while contributing financially to the people and organizations who support the AON. None of it will ever be traced back to them, but if you know what to look for, their fingerprints are all over the place. You’re kidding yourself if you think mankind is calling the shots. It’s the Olids. It’s always been the Olids. The AON party is just one of their many puppets.” He eyed the pilot with a taunting smile. “So is the Ring Guild, you know.”

The annoyance that had been building burst through as anger. “I’m a Guild pilot, remember? All this Olid ‘invisible empire’ stuff is a load of horse shit. The reason the Olids helped us during the Conflicts is because they hated the Ghasts and wanted us to get rid of them.”

“Listen to what you just said. It proves my point exactly.”

The pilot snorted. “Believe what you want, old man. Love the Ghasts if you want. It doesn’t matter. Earth is on the rise, and it’s not because we’re puppets of the Olids. It’s because we’re badass. I might not be able to beat a Ghast in hand-to-hand combat, but I’d bet on humankind winning a war against Ghast every time. We’re smarter and more adaptable. More evolved.”

The jet-whine of an approaching aero sounded faintly through the thin walls of the hut. It rose slightly in volume, doppler-shifted, and began to subside. Both men listened until it was obvious the aircraft was moving away.

The anthropologist leaned back on his cot. “Let me tell you what I think is going to happen. I want you to mark my words. Are you listening?”

The pilot sighed. Maybe if he humored the anthropologist, he’d eventually shut up. “Go ahead, old man.”

The anthropologist nodded. “The AON will gain power over the next few years, but only just enough to keep Earth politics in a constant state of low-level turmoil. The Solar Alliance will continue to grow, but neither the Unity Party nor the AON Party will gain the upper hand. Any time one party gets control of the government, the other will overthrow it in the next election, and the policies of the Alliance will see-saw so that nothing ever actually gets done. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Caerens. They’re the only world in the Known Arc that the Olids don’t control, and the Olids don’t like it one bit. I’ll bet you a thousand Alliance crowns that a war develops in the next ten years between the Alliance and the Caerens. All this is foreordained, part of the Olid’s master plan to prevent any one race or organization to gain so much power that they can’t be controlled through economic manipulation.”

“Where do you get all this nonsense?”

“I’m a xeno-anthropologist. It’s my job to study the behavior of the alien races of the Known Arc. And I’ve been watching the Olids for years.”

The pilot groaned. “You know, I came out here to see the quag, not argue politics.”

“Sorry to ruin your little vacation by showing you a genocide in progress.” The anthropologist sounded miffed.

“Look, I’m really sorry about the Ghast village, okay? But it’s not my fault. I didn’t do it. I’ve got nothing personal against the Ghast. I don’t like ‘em, but I wouldn’t go around killing them, either. So lighten up, will you?”

The anthropologist poured the last bit of whiskey into the pilot’s metal cup. “Right. Sorry. I’ll shut up now. All I wanted to do was plant a seed. I figure that if I plant enough of them, maybe somebody in a position of power will do something about these atrocities.”

“Man, I’m not your Johnny Appleseed, okay? I’m just a pilot. It’s all I ever wanted to be. My job is to move stuff from point A to point B without running into anything. Let’s leave the politickin’ to the politicians and the prayin’ to the priests, okay?”

Outside the sun was setting and a repeat of the previous night’s chorus was playing out in growls and shrieks and squawks and roars. Thankfully the anthropologist had gotten over his foul mood. They’d eaten, played a couple of games of cards which the pilot had won handily—what had the anthropologist been thinking, challenging a Guildee to a game of poker?—and then they’d retired to their respective flimsy cots. This time the pilot used the earplugs, hoping not to repeat the previous night’s utter lack of sleep. Tomorrow morning they would fly back to the mission and the pilot would depart for the coastal city and the shuttleport. Back to work. Back to the grind.

Even in the relative silence of the noise-cancelling earplugs, he couldn’t get to sleep. He thought about the children in the village hut, and the gooey mass of mammalian entrails on the wooden platter on the center of the floor. Then he remembered what the anthropologist had told him the night before, that the creatures of Ghast were all invertebrates. Did invertebrates even have intestines? Beetles, crabs, lobsters, worms? He didn’t think so.

The child Bess had told them that there’d been four AON attackers, but only three had escaped. He felt sick, and thought of waking the anthropologist to ask if the entrails had been human, but in his heart he knew the answer. Those kids had been in the process of eating the remains of the missing human attacker. He’d been in a hut with cannibals.

No, not cannibals, not exactly, unless you defined cannibalism as eating another sentient being. The anthropologist had said that Ghasts didn’t consider humans to be sentient and self-aware. To those kids, eating a man was no different than a man eating a lobster. They were truly monsters.

What was it he’d said about clan memory? He’d had some fancy word for it, but it boiled down to the fact that Ghast females were born with the uninterrupted memories of all their female ancestors. He’d heard of this theory before, read somewhere about experiments done on captive Ghasts during the Conflicts. The researchers had given information to a female Ghast, forced her into the egg-bearing phase of her biological cycle, then interrogated the children born from her eggs. None of the newly born larvae had known the information, disproving the suspicion that memories were passed between generations. The anthropologist was full of shit.

The hut wobbled, and he pulled out his earplugs. The background roar of the nocturnal quag-creatures was deafening, but he could make out the nearby snuffling of a swamp-mug. He put the earplugs back in.

The anthropologist was also full of shit if he thought Ghasts were better than humans. No way. Even if the Olids had helped mankind during the Ghastly Conflicts, it was because they knew how to pick a winner. Humans might not be able to spray nerve-toxin or have spears that unfolded from their chests, but they were killing machines nonetheless. Humans were simply smarter than all the other xenos.

They were definitely smarter than the Ghast, even with their supposed clan memories, and they were smarter than the scheming Olids. Regardless of what the anthropologist said, there was nothing to stop mankind’s meteoric rise to power and prominence in the Known Arc. Not the Ghasts. Not the Olids. Certainly not the Fornicula or the Bosporans or the Colladus or any other of the minor xeno-races. Only the Caerens posed a threat, and that’s because they were a breakaway human colony who’d defied membership in the Solar Alliance. But the Caerens were only one world and the Alliance was many, with the might of Earth to back them up.

The hut shook again. He startled, but didn’t remove his earplugs, instead trying to relax back into his thin pillow. Two successive nights without sleep was going to make him useless. He’d probably have to take a speedie pharma tomorrow to keep his eyes open for the aero flight back to the mission.

The hut suddenly moved in a series of rapid, urgent vibrations. He shot up in bed and yanked out the earplugs. The darkness was complete. He took a deep breath, tried to relax. Should he awaken the anthropologist?

Another wobble, and this time he heard something heavy and solid, like a melon falling on the wooden floor of the hut. Over the scents of the quag, he smelled something. Something he recognized.

Raw fear shredded his gut. He reached carefully in the darkness for his flashlight, found it, and pointed it in the direction of the sound. Cringing, he clicked it on.

A Ghast child was standing in the center of the hut, her slimy eyepods locked on his face. Behind the Ghast, the anthropologist bolted upright in his cot, his frizzy hair a cloud of confusion. He let out a sharp scream when he saw the intruder. “Dear gods!”

At the anthropologist’s panicked shout, the young Ghast’s entire body went rigid. Its eye stalks snapped down into dual receptacles in its flanged skull, disappearing completely, and it clutched its arms around its chest. Something deep inside its thorax began a loud, raspy drumbeat, the sound a man-sized cicada might make.

To the pilot it sounded like a precursor to an attack, a war-sound. The anthropologist’s eyes narrowed. He rose from his cot. Kneeling gingerly in front of the monster, he said, “Bess, what are you doing here?”

He jerked back when the rear half of the alien’s skull split halfway open on fleshy hinges, revealing an air bladder that the pilot knew could force a jet of toxin a dozen meters with absolute precision. The drumbeat sound got faster, louder.

The anthropologist froze.

The pilot slowly pushed the covers away and slung his legs off the cot. His hand crept toward the knife strapped to his excursion pack,  which he’d stowed beneath his cot. He hesitated when the anthropologist gave him a terse shake of his head.

“Stay still.”

“What’s it doing?”

“I’m not sure. Don’t move.” The anthropologist studied the Ghast. “I’ve heard of this. I think it’s a fear response. I believe the noise she’s making is an involuntary alarm a young larva makes when it’s separated from its brood. She’s calling for one of the egg-mothers.”

The egg-mothers are all dead, thought the pilot. Killed by humans. He glanced down longingly at his knife.

“What do we do?”

The anthropologist’s eyes never left the Ghast. “I don’t know. Stay still. It’s unheard of for a larva this young to leave the village, especially in the middle of the night. I think she’s terrified.”

“Terrified of what? Us?”

The anthropologist didn’t answer, and the look on his face wasn’t reassuring. His voice rose into a forced, fatherly calm. “Bess, why are you here? Can you hear me?”

The ratcheting drum sound instantly stopped, startling both men. When the Ghast didn’t move, the anthropologist cleared his throat. “Bess, listen to me. Please stay calm. We won’t hurt you, but you need to tell us why you came here.”

Slowly, the tough, fibrous air bladder deflated and the skull-hinge closed. The internal bladder and toxin glands must take up most of the Ghast’s skull, the pilot realized, leaving no room for a brain. He knew nothing of Ghast anatomy. Its entire head was apparently a weapon, so perhaps the brain was somewhere inside the armored thorax.

Its eyestalks rose slowly. “The village is dead. Men came after sunset in an aero. They sprayed something over the huts. I ran into the quag with my sisters.”

For the first time the pilot noticed the streaks of mud and other slimy brown substances that coated the Ghast’s legs and abdomen. The colorful flowers he’d noticed painted on its carapace during his earlier visit to the village were smeared and indistinct.

“Fuck,” the anthropologist murmured. “Fucking barbarians.” He paused, frowning. “Bess, where are your sisters?”

“I don’t know. We got separated. They left the koihaj and swam into the tesh fields.”

The pilot remembered the submerged beast that he’d seen moving through the waterways of the tesh fields, and wondered how long the other children could survive against it and its even more fierce nocturnal cousins. Based on the anthropologist sorrowful look, he guessed not very long.

The anthropologist motioned for the alien to sit on his cot, then gave it a water container. It slurped at it awkwardly. The opening was made for a human lips, not a Ghast’s crablike mouth-parts.

As the alien tried to drink, the anthropologist moved to the pilot’s side and sat heavily on the cot next to him. The pilot glanced at his komnic. Two hours until sunrise. Two hours until he could escape this minging nightmare. He pulled on his boots, snugged them tightly, then retrieved his pack from beneath the cot. He casually rested his palm on the haft of his knife.

“Now what do we do?” he whispered.

“We don’t have a choice We can’t leave her here to die.”

Words of ridicule rose inside him, but he choked them back. Instead, he said, “We’ll leave at first light. You can send somebody from the church mission back for it.”

The anthropologist sighed, leaned toward the pilot. “They’ll take her to a Redemption Center,” he whispered. “She’ll be forced into an orphanage with Ghasts from different clans. That’s a very big deal for a child her age. Those places are…” he paused, grimaced. “They’re awful.”

The pilot didn’t respond. The Ghast was staring at him from across the small hut, and for an instant he felt a surprising pang of something akin to pity. The monstrous little minger was only two years old, and the AON had just murdered its entire family. Empathy had never been his strong suit, but he’d been abandoned by his parents at an early age, and he knew all too well the intense hopelessness and foundering loss of a child’s despair.

But it’s not human, he reminded himself. It doesn’t feel human emotions at all. It’s a man-sized cross between a crab and a praying mantis and a porcupine. It spits poison and dines on man-flesh. It’s the alpha killing machine evolved on a world full of killing machines.

The Ghast put the water bottle down, frustrated by her inability to drink. She took a deep breath and released it through her breathing spicules with an almost human-sounding sigh.

The pilot tried to ignore his growing sense of pity, push it aside, but the anthropologist was right. They couldn’t just leave her here to die. But really, what other options did they have? Ghast was an occupied world, and its citizenry were subject to SATO martial law. Based on what he knew about Ghast culture, no other clan would take in an outsider, even a child displaced by war. The only option for displaced refugees was to throw themselves at the mercy of the Cataclyst Church, and that meant enrollment at a Redemption Center.

The pilot suddenly remembered the last time he’d seen a Ghast. It had been a male, a bul they call them, and it had been a navigator on a guild long-haul freighter. It had worn heavy leather over its battle spurs and had filed down the terrifying ram-horns that the males usually sported. Even so, it had still been a completely horrifying sight, and the pilot had marveled at how the monster seemed to have become an accepted member of the ship’s crew. There’d been a reason, something about a natural talent that gave Ghasts a valuable advantage over human navigators.

“Aren’t Ghasts supposed to have a built-in compass?”

The anthropologist looked confused. “A compass?”

The pilot lowered his voice so the child couldn’t hear. “Didn’t I hear that one of the reasons their warfleet was so effective during the Conflicts was because they had some kind of sixth-sense that made them really good at hypervee navigation?”

The anthropologist’s scowl deepened. He shifted position, whispered in the pilot’s ear. “I’ve heard rumors. I know they have an strong sense of situational awareness. They can always point to magnetic north, and if you blindfold a Ghast and drop it from an aero at a random place, it can always point back to its home.”

“Jorlu mach,” Bess’Klurgh said. She pointed toward the hut’s wall. “My village is that way.”

Both men jerked upright. Ghasts have good hearing, too, the pilot realized. He cleared his throat, gave the anthropologist a sideways look.

“I have an idea,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but it might keep this little minger out of a Redemption Center.”

Everyone stared at them on the shuttle flight up to the orbital spaceport. The border officer at the exit station had called a superior to examine the paperwork, but it was signed by an official representative of the guild, and they had no legal recourse but to let the pilot pass with his unusual companion.

He was taking a risk, the pilot knew, but the downside was small compared to the potential gain. Olid culture worked in his favor. The Olids ran their Ring Guild with an iron fist, and one of their core tenets was that anybody who qualified could become a guildee, regardless of race or background. Since antiquity the guild had been home for the most diverse collection of creatures in the Known Arc, filled with extraordinary examples of rival xeno-races working side-by-side. The mandatory guild oath required every apprentice to relinquish all preexisting family, racial, political and religious ties. The guild became your clan, your race, and the Olids became your masters and gods. Ghast guildees were rare, but they did exist, and based on the results of his discreet inquiries, they were highly valued.

Even better, the Olids preferred to conscript the very young and the very desperate into their guild society. Less baggage, both behaviorally and financially, and more loyal in the long term.

The pilot smiled to himself. The little Ghast girl was young and she was most definitely desperate. In other words, a perfect new recruit.

His captain thought he was crazy, but after a lengthy komnic call had reluctantly agreed to the pilot’s plan. At minimum, the media optics of rescuing a Ghast youngster from a refugee camp and mentoring her as a guildee might go far to repair the politics between the Olids and the Ghast, which had been deeply damaged when the Olids backed the humans during the Ghastly Conflicts. Their ring-boss would be pleased. In any event, if it didn’t work out, they could simply turn her over to the church. They’d probably just send her back to a Redemption Center on Ghast, but so what?

This would be a huge positive mark on his service record. Hell, if he continued playing his cards right with the ring-bosses, it could be a ticket to his own ship.

“Captain Wiley Theron,” he murmured. It had a good sound to it. He turned to the kid, offered her his hand the same way he would a human child. “Come on, Bess’Klurgh. Follow me.”

 “Where are we going, Mr. Theron?”

“I’m taking you to your new clan.”

It was impossible to read the little alien’s expression, of course, but for a brief instant the pilot thought he saw something in her glistening eyepods that gave him pause. Was it a flicker of a deeply-hidden cunning, perhaps? An ancient resolve, backed by the malicious wisdom of ten-thousand years of memory?

He suppressed a shudder, and the disturbing image was gone as quickly as it had come.

Surprisingly, the alien took his hand, just as a human child would. Her claws were cold and dry. He led her to the docking port, where his captain and mates were waiting, wide-eyed and incredulous.

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Story copyright 2021 Patrick Cumby.

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If you enjoyed this story, your next step is to take a deep dive into the worlds of the Known Arc in my new novel GRONE: Legends of the Known Arc Book 1.

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