Invasion (Vegetable Wars Book 1) Read online

  He needed to cut the deep dive into trivia, so he got up to make a cup of coffee. As soon as he opened the cupboard, Duke came bounding out of the bed, begging eyes fixed on him. He couldn’t resist a pretty female, so he poured her a bowl of kibble, which she wolfed down, tail wagging. She looked back up at him hopefully, but when he didn’t pour her more, she wandered over to the couch and plopped herself down on it.

  Time to get to work, he told himself as he took his coffee back to the desk. He pulled up the prices, which had jumped higher from the day before. Next, he checked the maintenance schedule, created after his ag AI had performed its morning analysis. As usual, there was nothing that had to be fixed. His farm pretty much took care of itself, and the equipment was reliable.

  Not like in the military, he thought, going back to his dream, which stubbornly refused to fade away.

  Not that the military was as bad as in his dream—not quite as bad, that is. But still, with his last command, maintenance and parts acquisition had been his prime focus.

  Lost in the past, he stared at his readouts for a full minute before his mind returned to the task at hand. He shook his head once, then focused on the data dump. After nine months, the complex algorithms were only beginning to make sense to him. Not enough, though, for him to make a rational decision. With a sigh, he hit the “Accept,” and the day’s irrigation plan his AI had recommended went into effect.

  He didn’t have to review the AI’s recommendation, but at least by doing so, he could pretend that he was vital to the process. It still grated on him that he was little more than a caretaker on his own farm. He’d commanded a Marine division in combat, after all, and now he couldn’t even make a decision on how much water went to each field. Most of the other farmers on Vasquez, heck, probably throughout human space, let the ag AIs do the work, but Colby prided himself on being a man of action. As usual, he was tempted to override the AI, to adjust what it recommended, but he realized that would only result in a lower yield, and that would be detrimental to the war effort. He may have resigned his commission in disgrace, but he still understood his duty. If this was how he now served the Republic, then he would salute and march on.

  He knew he couldn’t complain about his situation. He might no longer be on active duty, but life on the farm wasn’t so bad. The work wasn’t difficult, and as he looked out the window to his fields, there was a sense of accomplishment. His farm provided much needed supplies to both the teeming masses of the megablocks as well as to the armed forces. A man could take pride in that, should take pride. And yet. . . he felt a hole in his life. Transitioning from being the commanding general of the Marine Corps Logistics Command to being alone on his farm had been an adjustment, one he hadn’t yet completed.

  He turned around, his eyes drawn to his “I Love Me” wall, where holos, flat pics, and plaques hung, all he had left to commemorate his time in the Corps. They covered the entire back wall of his small one-room farmhouse. I Love Me walls were supposed to be celebrations of a military man’s career, but Colby’s reminded him of his failure, it reminded him of what could have been. He’d been tempted to take everything down, to pack the items in boxes and store them in his vault, but he’d kept the wall up. Taking his holos and plaques down would be giving in to Vice Minister Greenstein, of ceding the field of battle to a man even pond scum would look down upon. Colby had never fled any field of battle, and he wasn’t about to start now. Instead, he kept the mementos of his life hung on the wall as he lived alone on a backwards planet in the far reaches of human space.

  He wasn’t completely alone on the farm, however. “Let’s go take a look at the morning harvest, Duke,” he said to the old dog that he’d inherited when he’d taken over the place.

  Duke wagged her tail twice, but didn’t get up from where she was laying on the couch. As a career Marine, Colby had never owned a pet, and it had taken him awhile to realize that the dog he’d named “Duke” was a she, not a he. He never bothered to change her name.

  “Come on, Duke. I mean it.”

  Marines used to jump at his slightest whim, but this old dog was a different story. There was an ancient saying about letting sleeping dogs lie, but he was a general, dammit, and besides, she was not technically asleep. He walked over to the couch and gently pushed on her butt until she gave in to the inevitable and slid off. Once down, she looked up at him with hopeful eyes.

  “No. You had breakfast already.”

  At “breakfast,” her tail started wagging in earnest.

  Ah, hell, he thought, feeling like a patsy as he went to the cupboard and took out two Happy Pooch doggie treats to give to her. He waited while she gulped them down without so much as a single chew, then with her on his heels, walked out of the door and onto his porch.

  He took a deep breath, filling his lungs. Vasquez might be a backwater planet on the edge of human space, but the air was clean and brisk, something that all the scrubbers back on the more densely populated worlds of the Republic couldn’t duplicate. The terraformers had done an amazing job on the planet, eradicating all traces of the native vegetation—everything from ancient forests of spike trees to inhospitable plains of poisonous thorn grass—to make it into a human paradise. Crops grew as if on steroids and without the pests and diseases that plagued other worlds.

  There was still a trace of morning dew on the grass, and he made a show of kneeling to touch it. “Another twenty minutes, Duke, and the harvesters can start.”

  The AI had determined that the lowest 20 hectares of pyro berries were ready for harvest. The genetically modified berries were calorie-dense food at 18 kwH/kg. A year ago, Colby didn’t know a watt-hour per kilogram from a hole-in-the-ground. Now, he knew that 18 kwH/kg was damned good. By midmorning, he’d have 400 tons of the berries harvested and loaded into an automated cargo pod bound for the port where they’d be shot into space to a processing station on New Mars on the other side of a wormhole, to be put into energy bars or jolt-shakes to feed Marines and sailors—at least that was who he hoped would consume them. His berries could just as easily—and more probably—be made into food for the civilian masses, but he chose to assume for the tenuous connection to his previous military life.

  Colby could return to the house, pop a holo in the player, and waste away the morning on the couch, but that wasn’t in him. Instead, followed by Duke, he wandered down a meticulously manicured path to the field where the berries were to be harvested. It wasn’t that he maintained the path. No non-commercial vegetation had been allowed to be established on Vasquez, so weeds and other superfluous plants were non-existent.

  Colby’s three-month old HRI-30 harvester hadn’t yet begun by the time the two of them arrived. The micro-sensors were reading the moisture content on the berries, and at exactly the right moment, the harvester would begin its task. Colby knelt beside one of the plants at the outer edge of the field, picked a berry, and again made a show of rolling it between his fingers though Duke couldn’t have been less interested. He popped it into his mouth, bit, and almost as quickly spit it back out, grimacing at the rotten-corpse taste. It still amazed him that the berries tasted so nasty, yet could be transformed into delicious jolt-shakes and hundreds of other delectable and nearly addictive snacks.

  “Yep, Duke, they’re ready,” he said as the dog lay down, put her head on her crossed front paws, and went to sleep.

  With a whir, the squat “Henry” harvester started into motion. Colby was still fascinated at how the meter-wide bot could advance down the field, looking like it was going to crush his plants, yet leave each one standing undamaged, but minus its crop. The type of plant didn’t seem to matter. Whether that was Wasabia japonica, pyro berries, corn, or anything else on his farm, the same harvester did the job.

  Colby blinked up his implant. As a Marine general, he’d had the highest-level implant available to man, and when he’d resigned his commission, it hadn’t been military policy to try swap it out for a civilian model. Instead he’d simply undergone a
quick procedure to deactivate the secure access function. Now, with the same 500,000-credit implant that would have allowed him to command a division in combat, he pulled up the harvest readouts. The numbers were excellent, both in production and quality of the berries. If the harvest continued with the same results, he’d be in for a quality bonus.

  Not that I need it, he told himself. What am I going to spend it on here?

  Colby had never married. The demands of the service had been too great. He’d dated a few times as a junior officer, but women quickly realized that his dedication was to the Corps, and not to them. Now, on Vasquez, with its extremely sparse population, there wasn’t much potential on the horizon. He had a handful of nieces, nephews, and their children, but none had paid much attention to him in the past, so they could go suck on an egg, for all he cared.

  “If you outlive me, girl, you’re going to be one rich dog.”

  Duke whumped her tail twice on the dirt, then went back to sleep.

  Colby’s stomach rumbled.

  While he’d fed Duke after waking, not wanting to feel her accusing eyes on him, he hadn’t eaten himself, and he wouldn’t eat until after his workout. He was still young and fit at 73 Standard Years, but he wouldn’t be if he let his body go to hell. He had a good fifty or so more years left to him, and he’d be damned if he’d do that sitting on a couch and simply observing the universe pass him by. Six days a week, he went through his Marine Corps PT program.

  “OK, girl, Henry’s got this in hand. Let’s get back.”

  Ten minutes later, he was back on his porch in just running shoes and shorts, no shirt. In the Corps, he’d run in whatever was the official PT gear at the time, and despite keeping up with his Marine grooming regs, he felt a little guilty at this small act of rebellion. He’d even once run stark naked, the ultimate rebel, until he realized that wasn’t the most practical way in which to jog. So, now a pair of shocking pink shorts and civilian running shoes were the most obvious manifestation of his rebellion.

  “You coming?” he asked Duke as he stretched.

  She watched him with what looked to be interest, but he knew she’d just lay on the porch as he ran around the farm, waiting for him to give her a second breakfast while he ate his.

  He easily jumped over the four steps leading off the porch and broke into a comfortable lope as he warmed up. As he reached the southeast corner of the farm, down by the winter melon patch, he picked up the pace. Within 500 meters, the sweat was forming and rolling down his chest as the machine of his body started humming. He might not be 25 any longer, but he felt like he was, and he reveled in how easily he ran along the perimeter path.

  After eight klicks, he gave a salute to Henry as he ran around the lowest 20 hectares, then sped up as he climbed back up to the house, sprinting the final 200 meters. It didn’t look as if Duke had moved since he’d taken off, but she sat up as he came to a stop, bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, to catch his breath.

  “Just give me a moment, girl,” he said, chest heaving like bellows.

  He grabbed the towel he’d placed on the porch rail and wiped his face. It took a moment, but something hit him as odd. He gave the towel a sniff, and it smelled, well, green, if a color could smell. He took another sniff, then looked closely at it. Instead of just Colby-sweat, he could see small specks of something. It wasn’t until that moment that he realized that his skin felt different, too. Wiping his hand on his chest, he could feel something rough and almost gritty. It wasn’t dirt, he could see as he examined his hand. Whatever it was looked organic to him.

  He immediately looked up to the north. One of the old terraforming projectors was in that direction, about 20 klicks away. Vasquez was a Class 1 world, fully terraformed. It shouldn’t need any more adjustment to the environment.

  Maybe there is something they’re doing and I missed the announcement?

  From beside him, Duke whined, putting her right paw on his thigh.

  “OK, OK, girl, I get the message.”

  He opened the door and let her in, then stripped and went into the shower. As the water jets scoured his skin, he couldn’t help but note the surprisingly large number of specks, or whatever they were, flowing off his body to swirl down the drain.

  It was rare for the small residual TF office on the planet to do even minor tweaks, but if they were doing something, that could affect his farm. . . . He’d have to check to find out.

  “After chow, though. I’m pretty hungry,” he said to himself, and his stomach rumbled again in agreement.

  ***************

  Colby let out a satisfied, and completely non-reg, burp as he climbed up on his Number 3 wind turbine, the taste of bacon coming back for a second time. One of the advantages of living on Vasquez was the readily available meat products, not the least being thick, applewood-smoked bacon. Even as a Marine general, most of his protein, and much of his other food, was fabricated in huge food factories, the kind to which the bulk of his crops provided the raw materials. Despite the scientists swearing that their factory-grown slabs of meat could not be distinguished from the real thing, no one believed that. And while Colby only grew crops, there were more than a few ranchers who raised chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows for the rich and powerful, those men and women at the top of the Republic’s corporate and government ladders.

  Cost for moving foodstuffs out of the gravity well had come down significantly over the last 30 years, but still, it wasn’t cheap. Along with the specialty vegetables (such as Colby’s winter melons), meat couldn’t be preprocessed at Vasquez’ ag station, so the cost to transport it was high. That meant the costs were relatively low on the planet, and he had arrangements with several ranchers to barter winter melons, pomegranates, and densuke melons for beef, pork, and chicken.

  He reached above his head and tried to twist the offending vane into place. It didn’t’ budge. Colby’s farm was completely self-reliant for power. Solar panels, four wind turbines, and a methane digester provided for all his energy needs. With the single automated hover rail that took his products to the port and delivered what he needed, Colby rarely had to leave the farm let alone interact with another human being.

  It looked like he would be having a guest over to the farm, however. Number 3 was only producing at 94 percent. That wouldn’t affect his operations, but 51 years in the military had ingrained in him to be prepared for any eventuality. If other systems went down, then that missing six percent from Number 3 would be felt. The problem was that while the turbine’s analytics pinpointed the issue, it could not correct the physical problem, and none of Colby’s tugging was having any effect. He’d have to put in a service call to get one of the techs out to fix it. With four techs on the entire planet (and only one on the continent), that might take a while.

  Admitting defeat, he climbed down off the structure, placing the request through his implant. He received an immediate response, and as he expected, an appointment was scheduled in four weeks time.

  “Come on, Duke, let’s get back to the house,” he said.

  To his surprise, Duke seemed more interested in something by the hop-beans, another high-caloric base crop for the factories.

  “Let’s go girl. Lunch!”

  Instead, Duke barked, then pawed at something. Curious, Colby knelt beside the dog, wondering what had gotten her worked up. On his home planet of Tiergarten Delta, rabbits and other small animals had been released into the wild, so there were things for a dog to chase. But this was Vasquez. There weren’t animals on the planet that had no commercial value. Earthworms, bees, and livestock, yes. Rabbits or other small mammals that could eat the precious crops, no.

  But it wasn’t a mammal that had caught Duke’s attention. To his surprise, Colby saw several small plant-like. . . things. . . under the broad leaves of the hop-beans. He used the term “plant-like” because while they looked like vegetation of some sort, they were not anything he’d seen before. Naturally meticulous and with time on his hands, Colby ha
d studied every crop and plant that had been introduced on the planet. Whatever these were, they were not on the list.

  It was possible that these were some sort of nitrogen-fixing genmod that was being introduced, but when Colby had queried the net for info right after breakfast, he’d come up blank. For a Class 1 world to have something else introduced, there would have been tons of forums and debate, days and days of documentation and recordings to wade through. It was inconceivable that the planet’s inhabitants would not have been part of the process. Things like this, usually fueled by corporate greed or governmental experiments, had occurred before, almost always with disastrous results.

  And whatever the small, five-centimeter-tall things were, they didn’t look like normal plants. They had a central stalk, a leafy, compact crown, and what looked like thick, ropy roots splayed under them. Weirder still, they seemed oriented to Duke and him, as if they were watching them. He slowly moved to his right, and while he couldn’t be sure, it seemed like they were following him.

  Come on, Colby, get ahold of yourself. You’ve been alone too long. It’s bad enough that you talk to Duke like she’s human, but this. . . ?

  Whatever the things were, they bothered him. Plants, even genmodded plants with who knows what genes spliced into them, didn’t grow this fast. If they had, in fact, come from the specks that had landed on him during this run, they were way too big a mere three hours later.

  “Let’s go, Duke, now!” he said, pulling back on her neck scruff.

  He shuddered, then quickly walked back up the path to his vault. He could see more of the plant-things along the way, and he could have sworn that some actually moved off the path as he approached.

  But that’s impossible, right?

  The door whooshed open as he approached. He grabbed a hand-sprayer and he went straight to the rack of cylinders, where 20 were on three offset shelves, tubes sprouting from the tops like crazy Medusas. It took him a moment to find the right one, then by bypassing the main feed tube, he managed to fill his sprayer with RU-22. He gave it a tentative spray, and it emitted a fine mist. The vault’s air evac system sucked it up and away into a catch-vent.