Rengru Depot
Shivane
Evan Connolly’s Starfleet career, an ex-lover had once said, resembled the sport that so fascinated him: years of training followed by a lot of standing around, waiting for something to happen. The words had been spoken in unkindness—and were, he thought, unfair to baseball. But only to the game: about his work, it rang true. A specialist in planetary gravimetrics didn’t have a lot to do until they actually got someplace—and as nearly happened at Susquatane, he didn’t always get to leave the ship even then. He longed to hit the dirt at every opportunity.
Twenty seconds on Shivane gave him a sudden determination to never leave the confines of a starship again. There had been no ports on the troop module for passengers to see where they were; Connolly now understood that to be a right and sensible decision. The sky alone was an abomination: a cacophony of nebular gases, nauseating in color. It served as backdrop to more than a dozen combat modules landing or leaving—and a variety of other Boundless fliers of a kind he hadn’t seen before.
Shivane itself, meanwhile, was a filthy sponge. What passed for “ground” was a fetid mat of slick moss that gushed oils with the least provocation. Connolly and his teammates had descended to the surface using their battlesuits’ jetpacks, but even controlled landings couldn’t keep them from sinking knee-deep. Further—and far more alarming—was that the ground responded to their jet exhaust by catching fire. It posed no threat to his armor, and so for a long moment, Connolly simply stood, wondering what the proper response was to standing in fire.
Out of earshot, Baladon called over his comm linkage to the team: “Quit daydreaming. Form up!”
Throwing up seemed more appropriate to Connolly—and he could hear that was exactly what Malce was doing. The Antaran had been the first to spot their destination, the Rengru depot, close to the horizon. Multiple dark structures huddled in a half-kilometer-wide circular area, covered by a dome of magnetic shielding that appeared in red on his headgear’s visual interface. At regular intervals outside its circumference were five raised openings into the ground, dark maws that led into tunnels beneath the protective shield. Surrounding the portals were gun emplacements, firing disruptor bolts at the Boundless ships.
Connolly looked up to see several hits being scored, blasts deflected by the troop transports’ shields. The oddball Boundless vehicles were in play now; gunship and bomber modules, according to the text that appeared on his interface when he looked at them. The vehicles dropped ordnance near the Rengru cannons in an attempt to cover the landings.
“Lieutenant!” Spock called out, pointing to a descending transport whose markings both of them had seen before on Susquatane. As then, Boundless troops debarked from meters in the air—also setting the spongy moss on fire as they landed. One, however, acted differently. Kormagan, distinctive in her older armor, triggered her jetpack again until she hovered just above the flames. Then she unleashed flames of her own—a cauterizing chemical spray from a weapon attached to her armor. Within seconds, she had burned a dry crater within the morass.
“Follow the lead!” Baladon pointed to one of the weapons protruding from his backpack gear. “Deploy Agent Urdoh-Forty, triple strength!”
Connolly saw the same instructions appear in text on his interface. He reached over his shoulder with his right hand—and felt the proper weapon leap into his hand. Some caddy, he thought, pulling the hose-connected sprayer forward and pointing it. Easy enough!
But while Connolly had been taught to use his jetpack on the processing vessel, he hadn’t been much in the mood to learn anything else, including how to hover. Thus, his attempt to replicate Kormagan’s maneuver sent him spinning in the air, spraying chemical fire wildly before pitching back into the guck. The flaming reagent, disliking close contact with its target, caused the tool to explode in Connolly’s hands. A loud clang announced ejection of the remainder of the chemical canister from his gear. Dazed, Connolly found himself on armored hands and knees in a burnt-out pit of his own making.
Baladon looked down into the hole at him. “Are you sure we’re not related?”
“I didn’t know how to—”
“Never mind! Get out of there!”
Determined not to try the jetpack again, Connolly clambered up the charred and smoking bramble walls. Doing so with more than a hundred kilos of extra mass was no easy chore even with mechanical assistance, but after repeated tries, he was back on the surface. Spock had burnt a proper shoulder-deep foxhole, he saw; Connolly made for it and entered.
Before he could say anything, Kormagan transmitted. “All squads from Dezik and Krall, infiltrate opening and destroy depot shield. Aloga and Vesht squads, provide fire support and prepare to reinforce!”
Warriors from Kormagan’s other carriers charged—and Connolly could see in his interface that they had glowing personal deflector shields of their own, protecting them as they moved forward. I have to figure out how to turn that feature on, he thought. Something was also happening above: the Boundless gunships were firing frenetically, trying to protect the warriors on the move.
That was when Connolly saw the black opening to the depot grow cloudy, and then white with movement.
“The Rengru,” Spock said.
“I don’t see—”
“Your armor has telescopic capabilities. Focus your eyes and use vocal commands to enhance.”
Connolly did—and wished he hadn’t. The faraway “cloud” was a stampede. Countless creatures, alabaster white, exploded from the tunnel onto the grounds before the depot. They bounded, twisted, and ran, seeming to take new shapes as they went, the wretched soil no impediment to them at all.
They were mesmerizing. “It’s somewhere between a trilobite and a crustacean,” he said. “If they grew three meters long.”
“The Japanese spider crab does,” Spock said. “But your comparison is apt. The Rengru do almost appear arthropoidal.” Spock seemed steps ahead in his observations of the creatures, still distant. “Exoskeletons with multiple body segments and paired jointed appendages. Shielded carapace, also jointed, running the length of the body and topped with a crown. Robust motor abilities, almost protean in movement.”
You forgot “scary as hell,” Connolly thought. Some internal musculature within the Rengru’s long limbs allowed each one to move independently and be used for support. As he increased magnification, he realized the many limbs were themselves multijointed and prehensile, miniature versions of the Rengru body plan. And they, too, had smaller limbs at their tips. “Fractals in action,” he mumbled.
“Indeed. Observe, north of the gateway.” There, Connolly saw something he hadn’t noticed before: the anti–air battery on that side had several Rengru perched on it, manipulating it. “Here as elsewhere,” Spock said, “fine motor skills are nearly a prerequisite for a spacefaring society.”
They didn’t look like they had any society at all to Connolly. Mesmerized by the sight, without thinking, he drew his disruptor rifle from his gear.
“They are highly intelligent,” Spock said. “I see them reacting as a group. They must be transmitting information to one another.”
Connolly wasn’t interested. “Spock, I think we’d better—”
“Rengru!”
“Spock?” Snapped from his trance, Connolly looked up to see that Spock had jetted out of the depression and onto the surface. “Spock, get down!”
The Vulcan stood with his weapon stowed, his hands out. Connolly heard him over his comm system. “Rengru, if you can hear this broadcast: I am Lieutenant Spock, of the United Federation of Planets. I wish to communicate!”