Invasion (Vegetable Wars Book 1) Read online

  “Fuck them,” Topeka said, straightening. Still, she looked back, stepping around Colby for a better view. “You’re right. They’re going straight into compost.”

  With the chase petering out, Colby didn’t see a need to push on, and Topeka could use the break, so he watched what was happening. He wished he had a pair of binos to see better, but even with his naked eyes, he could see more and more of them staggering as the roots they walked on gave way.

  But not with the giants. They had made it back to the launcher and tore into it, their leafy arms twisting and tearing the ceramalloy like so much tissue paper. If they could do that, then the launch facility, with Riordan inside, wouldn’t stand a chance if they turned their attention to it.

  As if on cue, Topeka asked, “How does the house look?”

  Colby shifted his gaze. The building in which she’d stashed Riordan was one of the few still standing. But it was only a matter of time. If a pair of plant giants could completely demolish a launch mechanism designed to withstand the stressors associated with payloads at gravity-defying velocities and last a hundred years doing so, he knew they could make short work of any building on the planet. And there was nothing they could do about it.

  Topeka had to have come to the same conclusion, but she just stood there, saying nothing.

  Colby was a general—a disgraced general, true, but a general nonetheless. Marines didn’t earn their stars unless they had that take-charge attitude needed to fight their Marines. He stood there with only a civilian and a dog, but his mind kept churning on how he could turn the three of them into a task force that could defeat the enemy.

  No miracle plan popped into his mind.

  “I sure wish I knew what was going on everywhere else,” Topeka said, as she stared back toward the station.

  Colby hit himself in the forehead. The local net had been knocked out and Topeka might be cut off, but he had his military implant. He’d largely forgotten about it after calling Erin. Ralph, the farm AI, was connected to the local repeaters and was now silent with them knocked out, but the implant was connected to the hadron comms ecosystem. It didn’t need to rely on planet-based repeaters and could create networks almost out of thin air.

  He activated the implant, feeling the familiar surge as it hugged his brain. The implant was downloading terabytes of information from thousands, if not tens of thousands of sources, from any PA on the planet still transmitting to satellites in orbit. The shared volume of information pouring in threatened to overwhelm him. The key in getting something useful from all that data was knowing how to manage it in usable forms, and Colby had years of practice doing that.

  He immediately created a filter to isolate inputs into a series of categories. The first one was for human transmissions, hoping to see if anyone else had survived and was trying to contact others. That folder was empty.

  His implant had flagged another folder with a red alert message. This one was for vehicular movement, which might mean someone was trying to come to the station. Colby quickly opened it, but was confused. No surface movement had been identified, but rather something high in the sky.

  What the hell is that? It looked to be coming in from outside the planet’s atmosphere.

  He narrowed his search parameters, and the explanation came into focus. Something was heading to the planet’s surface.

  “We’ve got company coming,” he told Topeka.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, something is coming in for a landing, something not in any database. You told me there was a ship in orbit that was the source of the plants we’ve been fighting. If I had to guess, I’d say the plant boss is coming to take a look at what’s happening here.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked. “The system’s down, and my PA ain’t working for shit.”

  “I’ve still got my implant,” he told her, pointing to his temple.

  “So? I’ve got mine, too.”

  “Uh. . . mine. . . well, it’s got a few more capabilities than yours. I’m connected to the hadron ecosystem.”

  “So, can you order up a navy battleship or something?”

  “Not exactly. I already attempted to get us some help, but I sort of got the door slammed in my face.”

  She let that sink in, then said, “General, you must have fucked up royally. We always wondered why you were here on this shithole in the ass end of the galaxy, and if they won’t even talk to you. . .”

  Colby ignored the dig and ran a landing trajectory. He wasn’t surprised that the ship was going to land nearby. If this was the general calling the shots, or even just some version of an inspector, it would want to be near the troops.

  He turned to look back at the plant soldiers again. A few were still advancing, even more slowly than before, but most were down and becoming compost.

  Pretty lousy soldiers, if they can’t even pursue us, he thought, forgetting for the moment at how easy they’d demolished his farm and the station.

  “So, where’s this motherfucker landing?” Topeka asked.

  “Unless it alters its course, about 800 meters thataway,” he answered, pointing deeper into the trees.

  Topeka pulled a machete out of her pack and said, “Then I say we go meet this piece of shit and teach it a fucking lesson.”

  ***************

  “Remember, we’re only trying to gather some intel,” he told Topeka as they crept forward through the trees.

  “You already told me that, like ten times, already, too,” Topeka snarled.

  If the whitening of her hands around the handle of her machete was any indication, she wanted, no, needed, to kick some ass. And that could be a disaster. Until he knew exactly what they faced, any rash action might screw things up.

  Colby understood Topeka’s emotional state, however. He was a Marine, and he’d lost friends, leaders, and his troops in combat. No warrior could ever forget that. Topeka had lost her friends as well, and Riordan was back in a med chamber right now, at risk from some giant broccoli. She was angry, and she wanted revenge. It was up to Colby to hold her back until he had a better grasp of the situation.

  Behind Topeka, Duke started whining.

  “Quiet, girl,” he said, kneeling with his hands out to her.

  She ignored him, her attention riveted to the front. It was evident that she did not want to go any further.

  “Wait here,” he told Topeka before grabbing Duke’s collar and leading her back 20 meters.

  He hadn’t thought to bring a leash, and there weren't any handy vines that every hero in any Hollybolly flick seemed to find when they needed a rope. With a sense of resignation, he pulled off his belt, looped it through her collar, and tied it off on a low branch.

  “Stay here, girl. And please, don’t bark,” he said, cradling her head in his hands.

  Her brown eyes looked up at him. He wondered what was going on in her little dog mind. She understood something was very wrong, that much was certain. She’d been whining at something, after all. He rubbed her belly for a few moments, and with an almost human sigh, she lay down and rolled onto her back. He kept it up for a full minute, feeling her fur through his fingers, hoping this wouldn’t be the last time he’d be doing it. He’d inherited Duke, and she’d grown on him. Him. General Colby Meritt Edson. A dog lover?

  “That’s enough, girl. I’ve got to go.”

  She whumped her tail once on the ground, but didn’t bark. With a last pat on her head and a pull to hitch up his pants, he left her there.

  “What did you do with her?” Topeka asked as he caught up with her again.

  “What? I tied her to a tree so she won’t get hurt. Why, what do you think I did?” he asked confused.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not a soldier,” she said, her voice restrained and emotionless.

  What the hell does she think I am?

  He almost demanded that she come back with him to see Duke for herself, but he shook it off. Up ahead was the enemy. She’d see Duke soon e
nough.

  “OK, let’s move up, but slowly. We don’t want to be picked up by any pickets.”

  “Pickets? You mean a fence?”

  “No, pickets. Uh. . . sentries. Soldiers sent out to make sure no one like us sneaks up on them.”

  “Why didn’t you just say ‘sentries’ in the first place,” she muttered under her breath.

  Colby chose to ignore the comment. She wasn’t a Marine, and he wasn’t her commander. Still, it took a force of will to turn away.

  The thought of pickets gave him pause, though. He wanted to conduct a quick recon, find out what was there, then get back unseen to decide their next course of action. But if there was a picket, then they might be spotted, and they’d have to defend themselves—and they didn’t have all that much with which to do it. Sure, they still had a few grenades, but no direct fire weapons.

  But, relatively speaking, rifles and beamers were only the more recent weapons man had ever used.

  He held his hand out for the machete, which Topeka reluctantly gave him. They were in a fir forest, a common terraforming tree. A fast growing, renewable resource with a million and one uses. Firs were not the best for what he had in mind, but not the worst by any stretch of the imagination, either.

  With Topeka looking at him as if he were crazy, he selected four young trees, each about three-to-four meters tall. A few whacks with the machete, and they were down. Working quickly, he stripped the branches, leaving the central shaft bare. He hefted one to his shoulder and balanced it for a moment. Satisfied with the feel, he laid them down and cut each shaft to about two meters in length.

  He was so caught up in what he was doing, it was a few moments before he remembered that Topeka was much smaller than him. Looking up at her, he mentally measured her height and arm length, then lopped off another half-meter from two of them. A few more chops with the extremely sharp machete, and he had pointed tips.

  If I had more time, I’d fire harden the tips.

  If I had more time, I’d fit a metal head on each of these, he admonished himself. Or requisition a meson beamer. Hell, might as well go for broke and call in a Navy battleship.

  These were not the best spears ever made, but they could use them in a pinch, not waiting for a grenade to go off. There were too many unknowns ahead of them, and a few seconds might make the difference between life and death.

  There was one more easy thing he could do to improve the crude spears’ effectiveness. Colby searched the detritus on the ground until he found a piece of wood that would serve. With a few more cuts of his trusty machete, he fashioned an axolotl. Colby had employed them many times during Escape and Evasion exercises, and they were surprisingly easy to use.

  “Are you done farting around, General?” Topeka asked.

  “Have you ever used one of these?”

  “Used one? I don’t know what the hell it is.”

  Colby frowned. He’d expected her to at least know that much.

  “These are your spears,” he said, handing her the two shorter ones.

  “I’ll take the machete,” she said, hand out. “And I’ve got the grenades you gave me.”

  He gave it back, but added, “The grenades have about a ten-meter ECR. . . uh, that means, Effective Casualty Radius. Any nearer, they’ll get you, too. And you’ll have to close in with one of them to use your machete.”

  “Close with who? We don’t even know what we’re facing.”

  “That’s my point,” said Colby, shaking one of the spears to bring her attention back to them. “With these babies you can hold them off. Given the right opportunity you can even throw them.”

  “Throw them? You only made two for me.”

  “Right, which is why you should avoid doing that, if you can help it. But if you do have to throw, this axolotl will put more power into it. Here, try it.”

  He showed Topeka how to use the axolotl and had her practice half-a-dozen throws at the trunk of a large tree ten meters away. She missed each time and was getting frustrated.

  “OK, don’t throw if you have to. Just stab anything that comes close.”

  “Stupid axo-tot-o,” she muttered and she slipped it through her belt.

  “OK, then, I think we’re ready. Let’s go find our spaceship.”

  They didn’t have to advance far. Within 50 meters, they reached a small opening in the trees. Smack-dab in the middle of the opening was what looked like nothing more than a 20-meter long, mottled greenish-black seed pod. There was no doubt, however, that this was a ship, a huge, space-faring zucchini.

  Topeka stopped for a moment, then reached for one of her grenades, taking a step forward before Colby grabbed her and pulled her to the ground.

  “We’re here to observe, now,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  She glared daggers at him, but nodded.

  Around the spaceship, several small plants moved about, poking rope-like tendrils into the ground and holding feathery-looking branches into the air. Colby didn’t need anyone to tell him that they were taking measurements.

  “They’re taking measurements,” Topeka said anyway.

  Colby shushed her.

  The side of the ship split open with a one-meter fissure, and a squat plant trundled out. The front elongated into a flat blade, which it used to scoop up some soil before turning back and reentering the ship. The opening sealed shut with nary a sign it had even existed.

  “What now?” Topeka asked.

  “Now we wait and observe.”

  He could feel Topeka’s frustration, but he wasn’t going to rush things. Too much depended on them not going half-cocked.

  Sun Tzu had dictated that a soldier had to know his enemy, and there were just too many things that he didn’t understand about these plant things. They didn’t act like any human enemy he’d known.

  First, they hadn’t initially attacked him. Their offensive had been aimed at his crops. They’d only moved to him when he’d tried to intervene. That made no sense. Why attack stationary crops when a mobile human, who had the ability to take action, was left alone. The conclusion he’d reached was that the crops themselves were the focus of the mission. They’d attacked him when he tried to interfere with that.

  Even at the station, they were focused on the facilities, not the people. He had to wonder, if no one had opposed the plants, would they have still attacked? Would all those people, with their farms destroyed around them, still be alive?

  Colby let the hours pass, and as the morning turned to afternoon, there still wasn’t any action around the ship to reflect a military operation of conquest. It looked more like a science expedition than anything else. During his military career, he’d seen more than a few boffins in action, overly concerned with taking samples and spinning hypotheses and beyond clueless when it came to strategy and tactics.

  The plants had killed people, true. But the more he watched, the more this didn’t feel like a war of conquest. Just what it was, he didn’t know yet.

  All he could do was to observe and hope things became clearer.

  ***************

  Late afternoon, and Colby was no closer to an answer. He didn’t even know what was in the ship. Nothing over a meter tall had emerged.

  Beside him, Topeka had gone beyond antsy and advanced all the way to agitated. If they didn’t do something soon, he knew she would explode. But it wasn’t clear what, if anything, they could do. They had his grenades, but even if that was the right course of action to take, Colby doubted they held sufficient power to disable the ship. He’d taken retinal-shots of everything in the clearing, and had them queued up for his implant to send to headquarters. But, given his last reception, he knew he needed more.

  Like one of them to bring back, alive and whole and not broken down into compost. Which meant not waiting around for HQ to send a ship, but bringing the thing directly to them.

  Of course, that supposed he had a ship fueled and sitting on the apron, ready to go. Which he didn’t. Yes, there might be som
e fuel stored back at the station, but the only ships on Vasquez were sub-orbital continent hoppers, and if his growing suspicions were right, none of those would have survived the plants’ attack any more than his farm had.

  While he mourned the lack of a vessel, another fissure opened on the ship in the clearing. This one a little bigger than the others, but otherwise the same. He watched as a slender plant emerged, a woodier variation than any he’d seen before. It had squeezed out of the fissure and then unfolded and unfolded again to a full two meters in height. Colby wondered if it was the ship’s operator, but it went to the far side of the clearing and extended a proboscis of sorts and bored into the tree.

  Just another lab tech.

  “Fuck this shit, I’m going in,” Topeka said from beside him.

  She jumped to her feet. Colby lunged for her as she bolted, fingers brushing the heel of her boots as she darted across the open area.

  It was only then that he saw the last opening had not closed, and he knew that was Topeka’s target. He jumped up and chased her, one hand holding up his pants, the other holding a spear. Colby knew he’d be too late. He almost hoped that the two plants between her and the ship would interfere—not hurt her, just delay her down enough for him to catch her, but they ignored her.

  Topeka didn’t even slow down. Machete in hand, she dove into the opening. Her feet were visible for a moment, then with a kick, they disappeared just as Colby reached the ship.

  He hesitated a moment, running through his options. For all he knew, the ship’s atmosphere could be poisonous to human life. And what internal or automatic defenses did it possess, ready to spring into action at the first sign of an intruder. And they had defenses. Just touching one of the smaller plants when they’d first arrived at his farm had caused him pain. Topeka’s rash action could already have killed her.