Beauty and the Beaast

Etaan: Genocide

            A quarter rotation of the alien planet later, Etaan was still not tired enough to sleep. Cryo had a bad tendency to mess up your biological clock. That would have been bad enough, but on top of that he was concerned for the welfare of both his people and the natives they’d stumbled across.

            Okay, he was worried.

            He really hoped he didn’t have a reason to be.

            The oval door hissed open and he looked up from where he was sitting cross-legged on his sleeping station, his back pressed against the cold metal and the gel-filled cushion warm underneath him. Laarz strode through, his burly body rolling like the tank he was.

            “Any news?” asked Etaan.

            The soldier nodded curtly. “Captain Haarkin has ordered the atmospheric disruptors set to maximum and their probes jammed.”

            He sat up abruptly. “I didn’t know he’d deployed the Atmos. He must be planning on invading soon, then.”

            “’Invading’, Sir?” Laarz looked at him in bewilderment. “I thought this was an exploratory mission.”

            Etaan sighed heavily. “According to my father, it is. Or was. I have the feeling our dear captain is tired of exploring.”

            The Lieutenant commented quietly, “We all are.”

            “I know.” Closing his eyes, Etaan tried to think his way through his current predicament. Any of his fellow Artineans that passed by the open doorway would assume he was praying to the 13 gods and goddesses that his people worshiped. But they had never served him before, so why should he serve them now? No, the only one that was going to save him was himself. There was no one else he could rely on. He was beginning to wonder if he could even trust Laarz anymore. Maybe he couldn’t ever trust him in the first place. After all, the man was stuck babysitting him when he should have been serving alongside his comrades and that had to take a toll on anyone’s loyalty.

            Tapping his temple, he activated the nano chip embedded in his cerebral cortex. A home screen popped up before him in mid air, hovering with words glowing a gentle blue. Reaching up, he poked at the latest file he’d received from Maathin. It contained a detailed report on what he’d discovered about the native and its home planet. With a flick, the document scrolled down. Most of the first part he already knew: the planet was covered in entirely too much water and the indigenous species were dumb as rocks. But then he got to the part about what the Atmos were doing to the planet and he grew suddenly cold.

            “Due to the excessive amount of water saturating the planet massive hurricanes, tsunamis, and flooding are being induced by the atmospheric disruptors. Casualties to the local life forms will be catastrophic.”

            Swallowing down a burning sensation in his throat, he kept reading. My people mastered weather centuries ago. Surely the natives have ways to counteract the atmospheric disturbances? Maathin had said they were all idiots, but these idiots somehow managed to build transmitter probes, hadn’t they? That thought bore some consideration. It didn’t seem logical that a race of primitives could have built them. There had to be an even higher intelligence somewhere on that planet.

            So there it was. The chink in Maathin’s theory. He wondered how the doctor could have overlooked such an important detail. Maybe Haarkin had withheld that information for some reason. Or maybe the scientist really was slipping. Either way, he had to stop Haarkin.