Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Rosa's swarm zipped off and out. Veena and Jackie went south. Tom and I went north. We were out and about far past the Blasted Lands and the safety of the town walls. There were real dangers here. Fortunately, Jefferson lacked dragons, but it did have cockatrices, basilisks, loogers, yoats and more. You would have sworn it was almost an untamed world, one without an intelligent species to pushback or wipe out the things that threatened them when they were still using stone tools and going 'ooga ooga.'
No worries! Humans were here!
Actually, that was one of the things that Americans, and probably all the rest of the nations of Earth, were looking to avoid having the same song, different day, happening again. Americans who colonized the stars took an oath, a legally binding one, to respect and protect the worlds we were moving out to and living on. That legally binding oath had serious consequences - prison time! - if violated. That was part of why the repticulates were going to be doubly bad for Dad and Khiara if they were the ones creating them: the one we found digested Jefflife, not Earthlife, though it might have been able to do that, too.
Every morning, at school, along with the Pledge of Allegiance, American children on the colony worlds recited a version of the Oath that promised to protect and care for the worlds we had settled on. Our oath mentioned Madison. I imagined that on Franklin, Eurynome and others their Oath placed their world first. I shuddered and thought someone needed to give Escheria, the ecology, the Oath since its colonists were no danger to it, but rather the other way around. And for that matter, other worlds were under threat from Escheria's ecology and Escheria needed to respect that.
Ha! As if an ecology could have even taken an Oath.
So, we Humans knew we had abused Ole Mother Earth and didn't want to abuse our new homes like that. You might have said we had matured. At least some of us. Whomever was making the repticulates had not, obviously. Or perhaps, I had had too optimistic a view of people. Funny that I wasn't the jaded teenager, huh?
Tom and I trudged along. We had brought extra sensors that tied into our boosters and gave us a synthetic vision fed straight to our brain. I suppose to those from times past, that would have been freak, but to those of our time and place, it was a little atypical, but not unheard of. Out in the colony worlds, it was far, far more common. In this case, it allowed us to walk and see without needing any lights on. That was useful for some sneaking.
The boosters also gave us the ability to tink, exchange thoughts of different levels, without talking. Most tinks were words sent, but also had emotional content. Sometimes, people used it to share full sensory immersion. Most learned once that was done, it was hard to filter everything and people's brains often go to places others really find embarrassing. So, it only happened under certain circumstances. Tinking in general though allowed for a very stealthy way of getting around. No talking, yet in full communication.
Tom tinked a few words here and there, but, really, he was pretty quiet. He had been for a while. That was really abnormal. I had expected him to make some sort of comment, wildly inappropriate which would have been appropriate for him to make, about Khiara, my Dad and my discomfort with being out here. Yet he held his tongue. I also saw, as we went along, he kept stealing glances at me. I wondered if he was getting ready to make a snarkastic comment, but he still held his tongue. It drove me so nuts after a while I stopped, turned to him and tinked a yell of "WHAT?!" He looked a little crushed and tinked back "nothing."
I shook my head and started walking again. He stopped glancing at me. At least for the next half hour. Then it slowly started again. I was going to have to feed him to taxitos. I knew it. He was going to make me crazy otherwise.
As we crested the berm and went down the other side and I was wondering where I was going to leave Tom's body, we heard it. It was strange. It was a whisk-whisk-whisk of something flying. It was the wrong year for a baby cockatrice swarm, so it was not that. The adults that survived long enough were all tagged so people could avoid them. However, as a result of the cockatrice/basilisk/leviathan life cycle, there were very, very few flying animals in and around Shadwell. To be sure, there were the twarpers and whatnot, but they were more gliders. The cockatrices when they hatched would swarm an area and munch anything on the wing. Most of the time, that would be each other. However, they often munched anything else. Especially if it were flying. Cockatrices and basilisks were local to the continent Shadwell was on, but were not everywhere. People wondered why, but it was not a huge priority to find out why. People would get around to it. Eventually.
The result of not having many, if any flying Jefflife animals meant when something was flying, it was weird. And we heard it. And that made it an anomaly. And that made it worth checking into.
We tinked to Rosa to send her swarm and as Tom and I heard the sound of its passage go away from us, we ran to where we heard it going. We were slowly falling behind and would have probably lost the flying thing, but it was not trying to escape, but rather it was flying along in a weird circuitous pattern, even doubly back. No, it was not trying to lead us on, but rather it simply was unaware of us or quite possibly uncaring if we were there.
After a short bit, just before Rosa's drones got to Tom and I, we thought we had lost the flying thing. We were looking around and listening when it buzzed Tom from behind. It actually touched the top of his hair and the wind of its passage - not Tom's wind of his passage, that was normally bean related - tossled his hair but good. He screamed. It was a multitonal, cracking voice scream. One that would have been hilarious at any other time, at any other place, under any other circumstances. However, right then, it terrified me and I dropped to the ground and pulled out my needler.
Whatever it was was going far too fast for me to shoot with the needler. Even after Tom had gotten back up, furious beyond words at his crackled, cracked, semi juvenile scream, who was an excellent marksmen couldn't hit it. At least not without risky me. Which apparently he didn't want to do.
Right then, Rosa's drones showed up and they swarmed and chased and dogged the flying thing. Rosa tinked a gasp and had one of her drones smack into it. Then, the flying thing fell from the sky and crashed a bit away from us. Tom and I ran to it.
There, on the ground, smashed a bit, was a ro-bat. A ro-bat with a transparent stomach. One full of taxitos.
That was bad.
That was really bad.
Ro-bats, ones that digested biological matter for energy like repticulates, were just as illegal as repticulates were.
And this one had been manufactured to eat Jefflife.